For over a century, we've been trying to make humans work like machines. Now, we're spending billions trying to make machines work like humans.

How did we get here? And what does this strange reversal mean for the future of work?

In this episode of Tech Stories, we travel from Frederick Taylor's stopwatch and Henry Ford's assembly lines to the revolutionary thinking behind Toyota's production system—and finally to the age of humanoid robots and artificial intelligence.

Joining me is Jan Schjottelvig, a special guest who challenged the way I think about efficiency, leadership, and what it really means to put humans at the center of work.

Together, we explore how technology has shaped the workplace, why efficiency sometimes comes at a human cost, and whether we're asking the right questions about the machines we're building.

Because perhaps the most important question is what kind of life we're trying to create.

Tech Stories – Humans vs. Machines | Part 1

Special Guest:

Jan Schjottelvig

Leadership Expert, Advisor, Author, Speaker & Workshop Facilitator, Improvement System Specialist.
Inspires and supports Leaders in complex organisational environments to achieve high performance.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-schjottelvig-mba-gaicd-a52655262/

Tech Stories is moderated by

One human: Ferdinand Huber

and one Artificial Intelligence: Didi Allesweiss.

Listen to the Music of the Tech Stories by ⁠clicking here⁠

Used AI Models:

ChatGPT

⁠⁠suno.com⁠⁠

NotebookLM

Auphonic.com

Script, production and moderation: Ferdinand Huber

Music and sound effects created with Suno.com

This Podcast is brought to you by leantalk.org

For Contact and Information visit:

techstoriespodcast.com

or send an email to hi@techstoriespodcast.com

Hey, Ferdi here!

Every other week, between our regular episodes, I want to take you along for a more personal conversation. No scripts, no studio production. Just me sharing what's on my mind, what I'm working on, interesting discoveries, and a few thoughts about technology and how it's changing our lives.

Think of it as a little behind-the-scenes chat.

Glad to see you around.

🏆 Tech Stories is a finalist in the 2026 Signal Awards!

If you enjoy the show, you can help an independent podcast compete alongside some of the biggest names in podcasting by voting for Tech Stories in the Signal Listener’s Choice Awards.

Click here to Vote

Your vote genuinely means a lot.

Thank you.

You probably don’t know his name.

But Mohamed Atalla helped create the technology inside almost every computer, smartphone, data center, and digital device on Earth.

At Bell Labs, Atalla solved one of the biggest problems holding back silicon technology. Then, together with Dawon Kahng, he created the MOSFET — the tiny electronic switch that became the foundation of the modern microchip.

Today, billions of MOSFETs can exist inside a single processor. They power the internet, artificial intelligence, smartphones, and almost everything we think of as modern technology.

So why do we remember the CEOs, founders, and famous inventors... but almost never the people who built the foundations underneath them?

This is the hidden story of Mohamed Atalla — an immigrant engineer whose work quietly changed the world.

Tech Stories tells the hidden, surprising stories behind the world’s most influential tech companies, inventions, and creators—packed with insights, suspense, and real lessons you can apply.

Tech Stories is moderated by

One human: Ferdinand Huber

and one Artificial Intelligence: Didi Allesweiss.

Listen to the Music of the Tech Stories by clicking here

Used AI Models:

ChatGPT

⁠⁠suno.com⁠⁠

NotebookLM

Auphonic.com

Script, production and moderation: Ferdinand Huber

Music and sound effects created with Suno.com

This Podcast is brought to you by leantalk.org

For Contact and Information visit:

techstoriespodcast.com

or send an email to hi@techstoriespodcast.com

Every generation thinks it is living through an unprecedented technological revolution.

The steam engine changed work. Electricity changed daily life. Computers changed information. The internet changed how we communicate.

Each breakthrough promised progress.

Each one also created consequences almost nobody saw coming.

And now AI has arrived.

At first, the pattern looks familiar: excitement, fear, job disruption, enormous investment, promises of a better future.

But there may be one crucial difference.

Previous machines amplified what humans could do.

AI may begin doing the thinking itself.

So what can the last 300 years of technological upheaval actually teach us about what happens next?

And are we entering another chapter in the history of progress...

or something completely new?

Tech Stories tells the hidden, surprising stories behind the world’s most influential tech companies, inventions, and creators—packed with insights, suspense, and real lessons you can apply.

Tech Stories is moderated by

One human: Ferdinand Huber

and one Artificial Intelligence: Didi Allesweiss.

Used AI Models:

ChatGPT

⁠⁠suno.com⁠⁠

NotebookLM

Auphonic.com

Script, production and moderation: Ferdinand Huber

Music and sound effects created with Suno.com

This Podcast is brought to you by leantalk.org

For Contact and Information visit:

techstoriespodcast.com

or send an email to hi@techstoriespodcast.com

Why are we spending billions building robots with two arms, two legs, five fingers and a face—when the human body is far from the perfect machine?

In this episode of Tech Stories, we trace the strange history of robots from Unimate, the first industrial robot working at General Motors, to Boston Dynamics’ Atlas and today’s race to put humanoids into factories, warehouses and eventually our homes.

For decades, we redesigned factories around robots: fixed positions, predictable movements, safety cages and conveyor belts. Now the strategy is changing. Instead of rebuilding the world for machines, companies are trying to build machines that can enter the world we already created for ourselves.

But that opens a much bigger question.

If robots can eventually use our tools, climb our stairs, operate our factories and perform the physical work humans once did—what happens to the value of human labor? And if work is no longer what makes us useful, what exactly makes us valuable?

Tech Stories tells the hidden, surprising stories behind the world’s most influential tech companies, inventions, and creators—packed with insights, suspense, and real lessons you can apply.

Tech Stories is moderated by

One human: Ferdinand Huber

and one Artificial Intelligence: Didi Allesweiss.

Used AI Models:

ChatGPT

⁠⁠suno.com⁠⁠

NotebookLM

Auphonic.com

Script, production and moderation: Ferdinand Huber

Music and sound effects created with Suno.com

This Podcast is brought to you by leantalk.org

For Contact and Information visit:

techstoriespodcast.com

or send an email to hi@techstoriespodcast.com

Find the official soundtrack to the podcast here:

Click here

Have you noticed it?

Phones look alike. Websites feel familiar. Cafés in Berlin, Seoul and New York somehow share the same aesthetic. Companies use the same management systems, chase the same metrics and increasingly arrive at the same answers.

We were promised infinite choice. So why does everything seem to be converging?

In this episode of Tech Stories, we follow a strange trail from website templates and modular manufacturing to A/B testing, algorithms, outsourcing and corporate optimization.

Because when millions of decisions are continuously tested, measured and optimized, something unexpected happens: the weird alternatives slowly disappear.

And it doesn't stop with products. The same forces may be standardizing companies, cities, culture—and even the way we think.

So what happens when everyone discovers the same "best" answer?

And perhaps more importantly: what do we lose when we optimize away the weird?

Hi everyone, I am on summer vacation and plan to have a few weeks off from my podcast. In 3 Weeks I will be back with more exciting tech stories. Sorry for the lower audio quality on this one... recorded on the road.

Make sure to follow the show to not miss the next one.

See you in a few weeks!

Every day, we trust ratings without thinking twice.

Five stars. Hotel reviews. Google ratings. IMDb scores. Amazon reviews. Uber driver ratings. Credit scores.

But where did this obsession with ranking everything begin?

In this episode of Tech Stories, we uncover the surprising history of ratings—from the first commercial credit reporting system in 1841, to the invention of PageRank that transformed internet search, to today's world where algorithms quietly influence what we buy, watch, eat, and even who gets hired.

What started as a simple way to measure trust became one of the most powerful forces shaping modern society. Along the way, ratings stopped reflecting reality—and began creating it.

If you enjoy this content then please follow the show.

Tech Stories tells the hidden, surprising stories behind the world’s most influential tech companies, inventions, and creators—packed with insights, suspense, and real lessons you can apply.

Tech Stories is moderated by

One human: Ferdinand Huber

and one Artificial Intelligence: Didi Allesweiss.

Used AI Models:

⁠⁠cartesia.ai

ChatGPT

⁠⁠suno.com⁠⁠

historical facts: NotebookLM

Auphonic.com

Script, production and moderation: Ferdinand Huber

Music and sound effects created with Suno.com

This Podcast is brought to you by leantalk.org

For Contact and Information visit:

techstoriespodcast.com or send an email to hi@techstoriespodcast.com

Every time you buy a coffee, board a flight, or receive a package, you're relying on an invention that most people never think about.

But behind those familiar black-and-white lines is the remarkable story of one engineer whose simple idea quietly transformed the global economy.

In this episode of Tech Stories, we follow the life of Norman Joseph Woodland—from his early curiosity and engineering education to the moment he sketched a revolutionary concept in the sand on a Miami beach. What began as an attempt to solve a practical problem eventually changed retail, logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, and nearly every supply chain on Earth.