Byron Reese

While audience members once commonly asked, "What should I teach my kids to make sure they have a job in the future," today, says Byron, they ask, 'What do I need to learn to stay relevant in the future?' And, 'How do I keep from falling behind?' Everyone agrees that technology is changing the world. The question is, how should we change in response to it? In this talk, Byron tells the story of technology's advancement from the invention of language until today. He explores what's to come...

"Daily, the media greets readers with a variant of "THE ROBOTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR JOB!" The logic is simple: Everyday Robots get smarter, learn faster, and they will never ask for a raise. But, Byron believes this simplistic reasoning is entirely wrong. "Just as electricity and the assembly line weren't bad for workers, in spite of shrill predictions otherwise, AI and robots won't be either," he says. "In fact, they will create so many new jobs that our bigger problem will be a labor...

In this compelling talk, Byron demonstrates how current technological changes will ultimately bring about the end of poverty, disease, hunger, ignorance, and war. Byron explores how these historical problems of humanity are fundamentally problems of technology, and thus will have technological solutions, solutions we will find much sooner than is commonly believed.

The world has, throughout human history, changed. Almost always, this change is for the better. Through civilization, we have raised life expectancy, the standard of living, access to education, and political liberty. How has this change been brought about? Largely through the actions of individuals driven to change the world. This talk focuses on how that change happens and looks at how virtually any individual can literally have a worldwide effect on the history of the planet.

More data is created every day than was created in the entire 19th Century. And within that data lies to the answers to the vexing problems of life. Automatic computer programs will scour the data for associations that will be turned into algorithms to optimize every decision we have to make in life. And while we may not always choose to do those things, it will effectively make every person on the planet vastly wiser than the wisest person who has ever lived. In the future, no one will...

No matter what industry you are in, you probably have a sense that you are in one of those radical disruptive periods where everything seems to be changing. You might be wondering when it is all going to settle down so you can take a bit of a breather.
This talk explores how businesses that operate in industries that are undergoing dramatic changes can function and be successful. While traditional futurists seldom bridge the gap between "here is what is going to happen" and "here is...

What would you have foreseen seven years ago? There were no self-driving cars or Apple watches. Would you have seen the transformative effect that tablets and smartphones would have? The next seven years will have much more change than the prior seven years. We know this. And this is the change we need to begin preparing for.

The University system is a 12th-century French invention that remains to this day largely unchanged from its origins in the Middle Ages. Our K-12 system is a 19th-century German invention designed to produce homogenous factory workers. It, too, remains unchanged since the late 1800s. Now, we find ourselves in a world that has changed in ways no one expected. Now, the two most important job skills are teaching yourself new skills and working collaboratively with a team, neither of which are...

"Daily, the media greets readers with a variant of “THE ROBOTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR JOB!” 

The logic is simple: Every day, Robots get smarter and learn faster, and they will never ask for a raise. But Byron believes this simplistic reasoning is entirely wrong. "Just as electricity and the assembly line weren’t bad for workers, in spite of shrill predictions otherwise, AI and robots won’t be either," he says. In fact, they will create so many new jobs that our bigger problem will...

While audience members once commonly asked, "What should I teach my kids to make sure they have a job in the future,” today, says Byron, they ask, 'What do I need to learn to stay relevant in the future?' And, 'How do I keep from falling behind?' Everyone agrees that technology is changing the world. The question is, how should we change in response to it? In this talk, Byron tells the story of technology's advancement from the invention of language until today. He explores what's to come...

In this compelling talk, Byron demonstrates how current technological changes will ultimately bring about the end of poverty, disease, hunger, ignorance, and war. Byron explores how these historical problems of humanity are fundamentally problems of technology, and thus will have technological solutions, solutions we will find much sooner than is commonly believed.

The world has, throughout human history, changed. Almost always, this change is for the better. Through civilization, we have raised life expectancy, the standard of living, access to education, and political liberty. How has this change been brought about? Largely through the actions of individuals driven to change the world. This talk focuses on how that change happens and looks at how virtually any individual can literally have a worldwide effect on the history of the planet.

More data is created every day than was created in the entire 19th Century. And within that data lies to the answers to the vexing problems of life. Automatic computer programs will scour the data for associations that will be turned into algorithms to optimize every decision we have to make in life. And while we may not always choose to do those things, it will effectively make every person on the planet vastly wiser than the wisest person who has ever lived. In the future, no one will...

No matter what industry you are in, you probably have a sense that you are in one of those radical disruptive periods where everything seems to be changing. You might be wondering when it is all going to settle down so you can take a bit of a breather.

This talk explores how businesses that operate in industries that are undergoing dramatic changes can function and be successful. While traditional futurists seldom bridge the gap between “here is what is going to happen” and “here is...

What would you have foreseen seven years ago? There were no self-driving cars or Apple watches. Would you have seen the transformative effect that tablets and smartphones would have? The next seven years will have much more change than the prior seven years. We know this. And this is the change we need to begin preparing for.

The University system is a 12th-century French invention that remains to this day largely unchanged from its origins in the Middle Ages. Our K-12 system is a 19th-century German invention designed to produce homogenous factory workers. It, too, remains unchanged since the late 1800s. Now, we find ourselves in a world that has changed in ways no one expected. Now, the two most important job skills are teaching yourself new skills and working collaboratively with a team, neither of which are...