Why you should make useless things | Simone Giertz
In this joyful, heartfelt talk featuring demos of her wonderfully wacky creations, Simone Giertz shares her craft: making useless robots. Her inventions — designed to chop vegetables, cut hair, apply lipstick and more — rarely (if ever) succeed, and that’s the point. “The true beauty of making useless things [is] this acknowledgment that you don’t always know what the best answer is,” Giertz says. “It turns off that voice in your head that tells you that you know exactly how the world works. Maybe a toothbrush helmet isn’t the answer, but at least you’re asking the question.”
Check out more TED Talks:
The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.
Follow TED on Twitter:
Like TED on Facebook:
Subscribe to our channel:
simone is like the exact opposite of elizabeth holmes
Simone’s favourite movie “back to the future”
this girls straight up popped out of a family sitcom
This is really inspiring. Pretty much close to home.
Whimsy is never useless. Building useless things is a specific aspect of Play. Play is our evolutionary legacy, from childhood, where we learn from experience, trial and error, skinning our knees and getting poked, cut, suffering and laughing and empathizing with our siblings and peers. We develop tactile awareness, see how everything works, or doesn't work, learn to tie and shape and glue and break and mend and combine and build and laugh and cry, with no clear important objective in mind or censorship that demands we get down to real work, grow up, and get serious. This freedom to devote oneself to often crazy ideas, into adulthood, is as much a part of the "American Dream" as getting rich or becoming famous. No artificially intelligent robot is going to recreate Crazy Uncle Ralph's closet workshop, and that is the point of being irrationally human. Once grownups stole the treehouse from kids, turning it from a grand and dangerous adventure, into an Architectural Digest series, another portion of essential childhood was benumbed, for the sake of Safety and avoiding Child Protective Services.
Whimsy is never useless. Building useless things is a specific aspect of Play. Play is our evolutionary legacy, from childhood, where we learn from experience, trial and error, skinning our knees and getting poked, cut, suffering and laughing and empathizing with our siblings and peers. We develop tactile awareness, see how everything works, or doesn't work, learn to tie and shape and glue and break and mend and combine and build and laugh and cry, with no clear important objective in mind or censorship that demands we get down to real work, grow up, and get serious. This freedom to devote oneself to often crazy ideas, into adulthood, is as much a part of the "American Dream" as getting rich or becoming famous. No artificially intelligent robot is going to recreate Crazy Uncle Ralph's closet workshop, and that is the point of being irrationally human. Once grownups stole the treehouse from kids, turning it from a grand and dangerous adventure, into an Architectural Digest series, another portion of essential childhood was benumbed, for the sake of Safety and avoiding Child Protective Services.
Now I know who made Trump.
God she's perfect
This was the worst ted talk ever!!!
She’s right: for people with perfectionnism problem, one of the solution is to tell yourself « I’m going to do bad things », not as a worried thought, but as a funny goal. Like « I’m going to do the worst I can do » or « I won’t put much effort you know, this won’t be perfect », and you choose it not to be perfect.
Results: you actually work, with less expectations, less stress, less perfectionnism complexes. You learn and enjoy working. And you learn to be more human.
Fantastic! So entertaining and I like her message 🙂
Love this message. Despite the Carrot Top homage performance, this is a good message! Kudos!
7:44 I love her
One of my favorite TED talks~~!
Nice ☺☺☺
I think you got inspired by Charlie Chaplin (ref. Modern Times )
i wish i’d had more opportunities for buildiing and gadgets as a kid. music was the acceptable nerdy thing for a middle class girl. i think her method of taking pressure off while building skills is fully genius. something we should all apply, but more than that she makes building fun, problem solving fun, and bring different fun. that’s something every girl… and boy should learn.
Nice mam…
That is inspiring actually. I'm showing my sons tomorrow. They think of inventions and are busy studying but this will inspire them to keep writing their ideas and maybe one day…they can do something useless, too. lolf
The term EXPERIMENT is the only reason why our country (INDIA) is still lacking behind such positions of Indians
So Sad
world will gain a lot when use your potencial after going to a mechanic school
I love all your useless inventions !!
I don't know why but I cried at the end 🙌💛
I'm tearing up. That was me. Her past self was just like I was, and to be honest I still am. Performance anxiety is one of the worst feelings, because it holds you back from doing these incredible things you know you will enjoy. I still struggle with it every day, being a student and all, but I'm going to take Simone's words to heart because this is incredible. I might not be able to make useless robots (yet), but perhaps I can start at my struggle with making art and perhaps make a useless drawing OF a robot. Just because it's fun.
That googly eye shirt is low key a look, tho 👀
At 9:37 I thought, "That's a bad idea!". She will hit herself in the face with a glass.