For the past few years I’ve posted up three lectures over the Christmas period that I think provide an interesting commentary on key issues of our time. The tradition is inspired by the Royal Society Christmas lectures that began with Michael Faraday in 1825.

Last year, I attempted to provide three videos that gave a more cautious, dare I say it, realistic perspective on what AI and other autonomous technologies could do.

This year I’ve been talking a lot about the future of work, so it seems appropriate that the three lectures I share with you over this Christmas period cover this broad topic.

The first comes from Deloitte’s John Hagel, who heads up their Center for the Edge, and who along with colleague John Seely Brown has done so much to advance knowledge management in recent decades.

His talk is grounded in the kind of things technology can do really well, and how this provides us with an opportunity to re-humanize work, and focus less on the rote tasks we hate, and more on the human tasks that we tend to love.