There are some talks that resonate with you and then stay there. I have many of them on my list, and I want to start sharing a few. I will start with this one: Jeremy Rifkin’s The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy.
Watch The Third Industrial Revolution on YouTube
Rifkin even explains in the talk why he calls it the third industrial revolution, not the fourth. It was made around the 2016-2017 time frame, and it remains one of the most beautiful talks I have seen.
So much of what he says feels like it is coming into play now, especially around energy markets, infrastructure, entropy, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That is not something you hear often in a broad public talk about the future of the economy. You really have to sit with it and listen.
His delivery is fantastic. I am not joking when I say I have watched this more than 20 times. Not five minutes here and there, but the entire feature-length talk. Every time I watch it, I learn something new, or I connect with something he said in a different way.
I wish we had more of this kind of learning while growing up. Instead of doom scrolling through silly TikTok ads, Instagram posts, and disposable feeds, sit down and listen to people like Rifkin for an hour. It changes how you think. It gives you more room for critical thinking. It gives you a better way to understand where the future may be going.
It is a fantastic thought piece, a lecture, and a full delivery of an idea. I wish more people would watch it.