Why You Should Make Useless Things: Simone Giertz (Full Transcript)

Simone Giertz

Following is the full transcript of robotics enthusiast Simone Giertz’s TED Talk: Why You Should Make Useless Things. Simone Giertz is a Swedish inventor, robotics enthusiast, TV host, and professional YouTuber.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello! My name is Simone.

You know how people tell you if you get nervous when onstage, picture people in the audience naked? Like it’s this thing that’s supposed to make you feel better. But I was thinking — picturing all of you naked in 2018 feels kind of weird and wrong. Like, we’re working really hard on moving past stuff like that, so we need a new method of dealing with if you get nervous onstage. And I realized that what I’d really like is that I can look at you as much as you’re looking at me — just to even things out a little bit.

So if I had way more eyeballs, then we’d all be really comfortable, right? So in preparation for this talk, I made myself a shirt. It’s googly eyes. It took me 14 hours and 227 googly eyes to make this shirt. And being able to look at you as much as you’re looking at me is actually only half of the reason I made this. The other half is being able to do this (Googly eyes rattle). So I do a lot of things like this.

I see a problem and I invent some sort of solution to it. For example, brushing your teeth. Like, it’s this thing we all have to do, it’s kind of boring, and nobody really likes it. If there were any seven-year-olds in the audience, they’d be like, “Yes!” So what about if you had a machine that could do it for you? I call it… I call it “The Toothbrush Helmet.”