In a sweeping vision for the future of work, Neumeier shows that the massive problems of the 21st century are largely the consequence of a paradigm shift—a shuddering gear-change from the familiar Industrial Age to the unfamiliar “Robotic Age,” an era of increasing man-machine collaboration. This change is creating the “Robot Curve,” an accelerating waterfall of obsolescence and opportunity that is currently reshuffling the fortunes of workers, companies, and national economies. It demonstrates how the cost and value of a unit of work go down as it moves from creative to skilled to rote, and, finally, to robotic. While the Robot Curve is dangerous to those with brittle or limited skills, it offers unlimited potential to those with metaskills—master skills that enable other skills. Neumeier believes that the metaskills we need in a post-industrial economy are feeling (intuition and empathy), seeing (systems thinking), dreaming (applied imagination), making (design), and learning (autodidactics). These are not the skills we were taught in school. Yet they’re the skills we’ll need to harness the curve. In explaining each of the metaskills, he offers encouragement and concrete advice for mastering their intricacies. At the end of the book he lays out seven changes that education can make to foster these important talents. This is a rich, exciting book for forward-thinking educators, entrepreneurs, designers, artists, scientists, and future leaders in every field.

在对未来工作的全面展望中，Neumeier指出，21世纪的巨大问题主要是范式转变的结果——从熟悉的工业时代到陌生的“机器人时代”（一个人机协作日益增强的时代）的不寒而栗的转变。这种变化正在创造“机器人曲线”，这是一种过时和机遇的加速瀑布，目前正在重组工人、公司和国民经济的命运。它演示了当一个工作单元从创造性到熟练到死记硬背，最后再到机器人时，它的成本和价值是如何下降的。虽然机器人曲线对那些技能脆弱或有限的人来说是危险的，但它为那些拥有元技能的人提供了无限的潜力，使他们掌握了其他技能。Neumeier认为，在后工业经济中，我们需要的元技能是感觉（直觉和移情）、观察（系统思维）、做梦（应用想象）、制造（设计）和学习（自动教学法）。这些不是我们在学校学到的技能。然而，它们是我们驾驭曲线所需要的技能。在解释每一种元技能时，他提供了鼓励和具体的建议，以掌握它们的复杂性。在书的结尾，他列出了七个变化，教育可以培养这些重要的人才。这是一本内容丰富、令人兴奋的书，面向具有前瞻性思维的教育工作者、企业家、设计师、艺术家、科学家以及各个领域的未来领导者。