Chris Koch

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Jobs Don’t Give Us Purpose and Meaning, Helping Does

Chris Koch

'Face it, few of us can say that our work has a high degree of purpose and meaning in the greater scheme of things. True purpose and meaning implies a degree of selflessness that few of us can afford when considered against rent, mortgages, college funds, or car payments. It’s one of the unstated frustrations in all the recent surveys that show how unhappy most employees are in their jobs.

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Why Can’t Companies Be More Like the Iroquois?

Chris Koch

'English: Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy, Hiawatha Belt Français : Drapeau de la Confédération Iroquoise (Photo credit: Wikipedia). If ever there was a cooperative organization that had less reason to endure until today, it is the Iroquois League. First formed sometime between the 15 th and 16 th centuries, it brought together five distinct tribes that had been warring and otherwise squabbling for centuries prior.

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6 Freaky, Funny, and Scary Abilities of Computer Organisms

Chris Koch

'I intended to write this blog about some of the amazing, helpful, and scary things that robots can do today, but even a quick look at the information out there demonstrates that robot is already an archaic term, like calling a car a horseless carriage. There’s simply no way that everything we’ve come to expect from robots in sci-fi novels and movies will exist independently within whatever bodies we put robots in for the foreseeable future.

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The Worst Source of Work Conflict

Chris Koch

'I have two attributes that set me up for conflict with my current colleagues at SAP. First, I worked in small companies for my entire career leading up to 2012, when I joined SAP, which is a huge company, and like any huge company, has its share of bureaucracy that was absent from my previous workplaces. Second, I spent most of my career as a journalist, which trained me to be vigilant about whether what people say is what they really mean – especially when it comes to marketing, which is the f

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The TV Is No Longer a TV

Chris Koch

'I am in the vanguard of cord cutters, a small but growing group of cable TV subscribers who have decided to ditch the cable box in favor of a variety of geeky devices that serve up entertainment through an internet connection. Between 2008 and 2013, 5 million (or 5%) of US cable subscribers cut the cord, with 1.3% brandishing the scissors in 2013 alone, according to Toronto-based Convergence Consulting Group.

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What Pisses off the Man Who is the Face of 3D Printing

Chris Koch

'MakerBot , a manufacturer of desktop 3D printers priced at the level of a decent laptop, is the best known of companies producing a product that has already been raised to PC-level stature in terms of its potential impact on business and society. Bre Pettis, the CEO of MakerBot, has become the face of this long-simmering but suddenly hot business (3D printers – the really expensive kind, anyway – have been around for decades) in part because he had lots of practice being a public face long befo

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The Robot I’d Have a Beer with – After He Takes My Job

Chris Koch

'The robots are taking over. I know, sounds like a teaser for a 1950s sci-fi movie. But it’s happening. It’s really happening. Actually, it’s starting with just two robots. One is named Baxter. If you haven’t heard of Baxter, he is to our traditional perception of robots as a salt lick is to a gourmet meal. Most robots are single-function creatures, welding roofs to cars or drilling holes or some other basic operation.

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