David Siegel, Professional Heretic

A heretic is someone who challenges the fundamental assumptions and beliefs of a large group of people. If it doesn’t get him/her hanged or burned at the stake, occasionally a heretic gathers a following and changes the world. Founder of the Swiss Pillar Project and now the US-based Giordano Bruno Institute, David Siegel wants to speak to your group. But he is not going to tell them what they think they want to hear. He’s going to point toward the truth and back it up with data in an interesting, informative way (occasionally speaking in elvish if it helps get the point across).

David has been a professional speaker for more than twenty years, giving over 200 speeches around the world. His prolific work on blockchain technology, entrepreneurship, and business has distinguished him as a thought leader in innovation, organizational dynamics, and economics. He has spoken to executives, managers, and audiences up to 1,000 people. An engaging speaker, David enjoys interacting with audiences, livening up panels, conducting master classes and workshops. David also does moderating and MC services for online events.

Keynotes

What is the Metaverse?

David shows that the Metaverse will be much more than goggles and gaming. While Web3 is more of a buzzword, the Metaverse is the future of the Internet. This talk is a combination of these two 20-minute presentations:

Platforms vs People

This talk, based on the two above presentations, goes deeper into platforms and “the social dilemma.” David shows that platforms tend to be winner-take-all markets and that they are generally bad for innovation and society. In this talk, David looks at Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and other large platforms, showing the pros and cons and helping people understand that there is another way.

The Smart Era.

This talk explores the next thirty years leading up to 2050. Much of our world is now digital. We have digital infrastructure for almost everything from science to government to leisure. Those countries and industries moving to digital and mobile know what to do - it’s no longer a matter of innovation but simply implementation. We are now entering the smart era, where humans and machines interact. In this talk, David shows that the smart era will eliminate repetitive work, create billions of new jobs, and raise the quality of life for almost everyone on the planet. For the next thirty years, humanity will experience an explosion of productivity, health, longevity, and prosperity - even as we add another 2 billion people to the planet. David ends with a glimpse of what comes next: The Machine Age.

The Machine Economy.

In this futuristic talk based on his popular essay of the same name, David explores how very different the world will be by the end of this century. By that time, machines will do all repetitive tasks and many non-repetitive tasks. They will entertain us, cook for us, and even put our children to bed. In this world, there are no human drivers on the roads - all drivers are machines that can communicate and coordinate. There will certainly be flying cars. There will be abundant energy, water, food, and natural resources. The human population will have peaked. Many prophesies of doom have not played out in reality. This age will not distribute wealth and prosperity evenly, yet almost everyone will be vastly better off than we are today. What will we do in an age where machines do most of the work? What about the divide between rich and poor? What are the real threats to humanity? David explores these questions and more, with plenty of room for variance and uncertainty.

The road to digital money. This talk can be catered to your audience to help understand money, why cryptocurrencies are not money, what monetary policy is, where we should innovate, and why long-run economic growth matters more than just about anything else.

Ten Drivers of Change for the 21st Century Based on his research for an upcoming book, David takes the audience through a neck-snapping tour of the next thirty years that will leave everyone thinking about their true priorities for the future. This is a special 90-minute talk that walks through each of the drivers and shows the impact they will have on our lives: globalization, gene editing, artificial intelligence, future of work, robotics, decentralization, money, life extension, personal data, and volatility.

Three Drivers of Change for policymakers: This talk is aimed at government and enterprise policy people. David focuses on the “big three” - Innovation, governance, and monetary policy. David shows how these three things will determine 80 percent of the outcomes we see in the 21st century. Here, he shows innovative thinking in governance, policy, and monetary policy.

The Future of Work: David takes audiences on a trip to smart contracts, personal data, and automation, showing how hardware and software will do most repetitive work within thirty years, what will replace it, and why that’s a good thing. This is an eye-opening, hard-hitting, yet truly uplifting talk that has been battle-tested in California with some of the most demanding audiences.

Future of Money This is an important talk on the future of monetary policy and crypto-finance. David shows how important monetary policy is to the world. Why is a bit of inflation better than no inflation? As he says, “If you like recessions, the monetary policy we have today is probably the perfect thing. But did you know central banks can prevent recessions?” In plain english, David presents the concept of Nominal GDP Level Targeting, which could prevent recessions in most advanced economies.

Here is a short talk from October, 2009, in London on the road to digital money. David is writing a book on digital money.

Intro to blockchain In this very accessible talk, David explains the basic concepts of blockchain in non-technical terms and shows how blockchain will change business, society, governments, and more.

An Alternative Look at Education. There are many books and people talking about how to fix education. In this talk, David makes the case that education is so broken that it should not be fixed. Instead, we must replace education with something better. He gives several examples of how we can reinvent schools and, in many cases, get rid of them, to make people ready for an increasingly long life of working and learning.

Tokens and Tokenomics An entertaining talk on what tokens are and how they will change our world. What are tokens? What kind of tokens exist? Why will there be trillions of dollars' worth of tokens in just a few short years? This is David’s most requested talk. Using real world examples, he shows how tokenomics and tokenised business models will change the world. He also gives a quick overview of the world of security tokens, touches on mechanism design, and makes predictions about the future of tokens and token models. 

Intro to blockchain In this very accessible talk, David explains the basic concepts of blockchain in non-technical terms and shows how blockchain will change business, society, governments, and more:

The shift from Push to Pull. The talk below is from 2010, but it ties in with the Metaverse talks above. This shift is important, as it is now part of the Metaverse.

David is a fabulous public speaker I have worked with directly on a number of conferences. He always brings a great energy to the room and can tell a complex technical story in a way that wakes everyone up and fully engages them. He strikes the perfect balance between fun, big picture 'blue sky' thinking and practical information.

- Helen Disney, event producer

For conference producers

Short bio

David Siegel is a Silicon-Valley entrepreneur who has started more than a dozen companies. He has written five books on technology and business, was once a candidate to be the dean of Stanford business school, is a fintech thought leader and is now one of the leaders of the open Metaverse movement. He speaks about personal data, open standards, decentralization, economics, the future of work, climate change, and monetary policy.

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