Winter Blahs Setting in? Watch this Video!

Andrew McAfee's presentation at the Opening General Session of Autodesk University in December made me feel pretty darn good. His message was simple: Technology, especially computer software, has done much to improve the human condition. The recording of his presentation is likely to lift your mood, too, if a dreary, post-holiday winter day is dragging you down.

McAfee, a research scientist at MIT and co-author of The Second Machine Age (Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time Of Brilliant Technologies), discusses how technological innovation is reducing resource consumption, returning land to nature and relieving poverty all over the world. His presentation is lively yet thoughtful, hopeful yet realistic. He clearly expects positive trends to continue, but he identifies two urgent challenges: finding ways to neutralize climate change and reinventing jobs so working people remain productive and engaged.

Autodesk University 2015 was all about digital collaboration and data-driven manufacturing. McAfee helped put these developments in the broader sweep of human history, which seems to him to have taken a dramatic turn for the better, thanks to computerization.​