Podcast appearances and mentions of Nicholas Carr

Patty and Brian discuss Nicholas Carr's new book, but they get sidetracked into hate-reading.

Summer rewind: Greg Lindsay is an urban tech expert and a Senior Fellow at MIT. He's also a two-time Jeopardy champion and the only human to go undefeated against IBM's Watson. Greg joins thinkenergy to talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how we manage, consume, and produce energy—from personal devices to provincial grids, its rapid growth to the rising energy demand from AI itself. Listen in to learn how AI impacts our energy systems and what it means individually and industry-wide. Related links: ●       Greg Lindsay website: https://greglindsay.org/ ●       Greg Lindsay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-lindsay-8b16952/ ●       International Energy Agency (IEA): https://www.iea.org/ ●       Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ ●       Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en    To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod --- Transcript: Trevor Freeman  00:00 Hi everyone. Well, summer is here, and the think energy team is stepping back a bit to recharge and plan out some content for the next season. We hope all of you get some much needed downtime as well, but we aren't planning on leaving you hanging over the next few months, we will be re releasing some of our favorite episodes from the past year that we think really highlight innovation, sustainability and community. These episodes highlight the changing nature of how we use and manage energy, and the investments needed to expand, modernize and strengthen our grid in response to that. All of this driven by people and our changing needs and relationship to energy as we move forward into a cleaner, more electrified future, the energy transition, as we talk about many times on this show. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back with all new content in September. Until then, happy listening.   Trevor Freeman  00:55 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com, Hi everyone. Welcome back. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a term that you're likely seeing and hearing everywhere today, and with good reason, the effectiveness and efficiency of today's AI, along with the ever increasing applications and use cases mean that in just the past few years, AI went from being a little bit fringe, maybe a little bit theoretical to very real and likely touching everyone's day to day lives in ways that we don't even notice, and we're just at the beginning of what looks to be a wave of many different ways that AI will shape and influence our society and our lives in the years to come. And the world of energy is no different. AI has the potential to change how we manage energy at all levels, from our individual devices and homes and businesses all the way up to our grids at the local, provincial and even national and international levels. At the same time, AI is also a massive consumer of energy, and the proliferation of AI data centers is putting pressure on utilities for more and more power at an unprecedented pace. But before we dive into all that, I also think it will be helpful to define what AI is. After all, the term isn't new. Like me, many of our listeners may have grown up hearing about Skynet from Terminator, or how from 2001 A Space Odyssey, but those malignant, almost sentient versions of AI aren't really what we're talking about here today. And to help shed some light on both what AI is as well as what it can do and how it might influence the world of energy, my guest today is Greg Lindsay, to put it in technical jargon, Greg's bio is super neat, so I do want to take time to run through it properly. Greg is a non resident Senior Fellow of MIT's future urban collectives lab Arizona State University's threat casting lab and the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft center for strategy and security. Most recently, he was a 2022-2023 urban tech Fellow at Cornell Tech's Jacobs Institute, where he explored the implications of AI and augmented reality at an urban scale. Previously, he was an urbanist in resident, which is a pretty cool title, at BMW minis urban tech accelerator, urban X, as well as the director of Applied Research at Montreal's new cities and Founding Director of Strategy at its mobility focused offshoot, co motion. He's advised such firms as Intel, Samsung, Audi, Hyundai, IKEA and Starbucks, along with numerous government entities such as 10 Downing Street, us, Department of Energy and NATO. And finally, and maybe coolest of all, Greg is also a two time Jeopardy champion and the only human to go undefeated against IBM's Watson. So on that note, Greg Lindsey, welcome to the show.   Greg Lindsay  04:14 Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Trevor,   Trevor Freeman  04:16 So Greg, we're here to talk about AI and the impacts that AI is going to have on energy, but AI is a bit of one of those buzzwords that we hear out there in a number of different spheres today. So let's start by setting the stage of what exactly we're talking about. So what do we mean when we say AI or artificial intelligence?   Speaker 1  04:37 Well, I'd say the first thing to keep in mind is that it is neither artificial nor intelligence. It's actually composites of many human hands making it. And of course, it's not truly intelligent either. I think there's at least two definitions for the layman's purposes. One is statistical machine learning. You know that is the previous generation of AI, we could say, doing deep, deep statistical analysis, looking for patterns fitting to. Patterns doing prediction. There's a great book, actually, by some ut professors at monk called prediction machines, which that was a great way of thinking about machine learning and sense of being able to do large scale prediction at scale. And that's how I imagine hydro, Ottawa and others are using this to model out network efficiencies and predictive maintenance and all these great uses. And then the newer, trendier version, of course, is large language models, your quads, your chat gpts, your others, which are based on transformer models, which is a whole series of work that many Canadians worked on, including Geoffrey Hinton and others. And this is what has produced the seemingly magical abilities to produce text and images on demand and large scale analysis. And that is the real power hungry beast that we think of as AI today.   Trevor Freeman  05:42 Right! So different types of AI. I just want to pick those apart a little bit. When you say machine learning, it's kind of being able to repetitively look at something or a set of data over and over and over again. And because it's a computer, it can do it, you know, 1000s or millions of times a second, and learn what, learn how to make decisions based on that. Is that fair to say?   Greg Lindsay  06:06 That's fair to say. And the thing about that is, is like you can train it on an output that you already know, large language models are just vomiting up large parts of pattern recognition, which, again, can feel like magic because of our own human brains doing it. But yeah, machine learning, you can, you know, you can train it to achieve outcomes. You can overfit the models where it like it's trained too much in the past, but, yeah, it's a large scale probabilistic prediction of things, which makes it so powerful for certain uses.   Trevor Freeman  06:26 Yeah, one of the neatest explanations or examples I've seen is, you know, you've got these language models where it seems like this AI, whether it's chat, DBT or whatever, is writing really well, like, you know, it's improving our writing. It's making things sound better. And it seems like it's got a brain behind it, but really, what it's doing is it's going out there saying, What have millions or billions of other people written like this? And how can I take the best things of that? And it can just do that really quickly, and it's learned that that model, so that's super helpful to understand what we're talking about here. So obviously, in your work, you look at the impact of AI on a number of different aspects of our world, our society. What we're talking about here today is particularly the impact of AI when it comes to energy. And I'd like to kind of bucketize our conversation a little bit today, and the first area I want to look at is, what will ai do when it comes to energy for the average Canadian? Let's say so in my home, in my business, how I move around? So I'll start with that. It's kind of a high level conversation. Let's start talking about the different ways that AI will impact you know that our average listener here?   Speaker 1  07:41 Um, yeah, I mean, we can get into a discussion about what it means for the average Canadian, and then also, of course, what it means for Canada in the world as well, because I just got back from South by Southwest in Austin, and, you know, for the second, third year in row, AI was on everyone's lips. But really it's the energy. Is the is the bottleneck. It's the forcing factor. Everyone talked about it, the fact that all the data centers we can get into that are going to be built in the direction of energy. So, so, yeah, energy holds the key to the puzzle there. But, um, you know, from the average gain standpoint, I mean, it's a question of, like, how will these tools actually play out, you know, inside of the companies that are using this, right? And that was a whole other discussion too. It's like, okay, we've been playing around with these tools for two, three years now, what do they actually use to deliver value of your large language model? So I've been saying this for 10 years. If you look at the older stuff you could start with, like smart thermostats, even look at the potential savings of this, of basically using machine learning to optimize, you know, grid optimize patterns of usage, understanding, you know, the ebbs and flows of the grid, and being able to, you know, basically send instructions back and forth. So you know there's stats. You know that, basically you know that you know you could save 10 to 25% of electricity bills. You know, based on this, you could reduce your heating bills by 10 to 15% again, it's basically using this at very large scales of the scale of hydro Ottawa, bigger, to understand this sort of pattern usage. But even then, like understanding like how weather forecasts change, and pulling that data back in to basically make fine tuning adjustments to the thermostats and things like that. So that's one stands out. And then, you know, we can think about longer term. I mean, yeah, lots have been lots has been done on imagining, like electric mobility, of course, huge in Canada, and what that's done to sort of change the overall energy mix virtual power plants. This is something that I've studied, and we've been writing about at Fast Company. At Fast Company beyond for 20 years, imagining not just, you know, the ability to basically, you know, feed renewable electricity back into the grid from people's solar or from whatever sources they have there, but the ability of utilities to basically go in and fine tune, to have that sort of demand shaping as well. And then I think the most interesting stuff, at least in demos, and also blockchain, which has had many theoretical uses, and I've got to see a real one. But one of the best theoretical ones was being able to create neighborhood scale utilities. Basically my cul de sac could have one, and we could trade clean electrons off of our solar panels through our batteries and home scale batteries, using Blockchain to basically balance this out. Yeah, so there's lots of potential, but yeah, it comes back to the notion of people want cheaper utility bills. I did this piece 10 years ago for the Atlantic Council on this we looked at a multi country survey, and the only reason anybody wanted a smart home, which they just were completely skeptical about, was to get those cheaper utility bills. So people pay for that.   Trevor Freeman  10:19 I think it's an important thing to remember, obviously, especially for like the nerds like me, who part of my driver is, I like that cool new tech. I like that thing that I can play with and see my data. But for most people, no matter what we're talking about here, when it comes to that next technology, the goal is make my life a little bit easier, give me more time or whatever, and make things cheaper. And I think especially in the energy space, people aren't putting solar panels on their roof because it looks great. And, yeah, maybe people do think it looks great, but they're putting it up there because they want cheaper electricity. And it's going to be the same when it comes to batteries. You know, there's that add on of resiliency and reliability, but at the end of the day, yeah, I want my bill to be cheaper. And what I'm hearing from you is some of the things we've already seen, like smart thermostats get better as AI gets better. Is that fair to say?   Greg Lindsay  11:12 Well, yeah, on the machine learning side, that you know, you get ever larger data points. This is why data is the coin of the realm. This is why there's a race to collect data on everything. Is why every business model is data collection and everything. Because, yes, not only can they get better, but of course, you know, you compile enough and eventually start finding statistical inferences you never meant to look for. And this is why I've been involved. Just as a side note, for example, of cities that have tried to implement their own data collection of electric scooters and eventually electric vehicles so they could understand these kinds of patterns, it's really the key to anything. And so it's that efficiency throughput which raises some really interesting philosophical questions, particularly about AI like, this is the whole discussion on deep seek. Like, if you make the models more efficient, do you have a Jevons paradox, which is the paradox of, like, the more energy you save through efficiency, the more you consume because you've made it cheaper. So what does this mean that you know that Canadian energy consumption is likely to go up the cleaner and cheaper the electrons get. It's one of those bedeviling sort of functions.   Trevor Freeman  12:06 Yeah interesting. That's definitely an interesting way of looking at it. And you referenced this earlier, and I will talk about this. But at the macro level, the amount of energy needed for these, you know, AI data centers in order to do all this stuff is, you know, we're seeing that explode.   Greg Lindsay  12:22 Yeah, I don't know that. Canadian statistics my fingertips, but I brought this up at Fast Company, like, you know, the IEA, I think International Energy Agency, you know, reported a 4.3% growth in the global electricity grid last year, and it's gonna be 4% this year. That does not sound like much. That is the equivalent of Japan. We're adding in Japan every year to the grid for at least the next two to three years. Wow. And that, you know, that's global South, air conditioning and other needs here too, but that the data centers on top is like the tip of the spear. It's changed all this consumption behavior, where now we're seeing mothballed coal plants and new plants and Three Mile Island come back online, as this race for locking up electrons, for, you know, the race to build God basically, the number of people in AI who think they're literally going to build weekly godlike intelligences, they'll, they won't stop at any expense. And so they will buy as much energy as they can get.   Trevor Freeman  13:09 Yeah, well, we'll get to that kind of grid side of things in a minute. Let's stay at the home first. So when I look at my house, we talked about smart thermostats. We're seeing more and more automation when it comes to our homes. You know, we can program our lights and our door locks and all this kind of stuff. What does ai do in order to make sure that stuff is contributing to efficiency? So I want to do all those fun things, but use the least amount of energy possible.   Greg Lindsay  13:38 Well, you know, I mean, there's, again, there's various metrics there to basically, sort of, you know, program your lights. And, you know, Nest is, you know, Google. Nest is an example of this one, too, in terms of basically learning your ebb and flow and then figuring out how to optimize it over the course of the day. So you can do that, you know, we've seen, again, like the home level. We've seen not only the growth in solar panels, but also in those sort of home battery integration. I was looking up that Tesla Powerwall was doing just great in Canada, until the last couple of months. I assume so, but I it's been, it's been heartening to see that, yeah, this sort of embrace of home energy integration, and so being able to level out, like, peak flow off the grid, so Right? Like being able to basically, at moments of peak demand, to basically draw on your own local resources and reduce that overall strain. So there's been interesting stuff there. But I want to focus for a moment on, like, terms of thinking about new uses. Because, you know, again, going back to how AI will influence the home and automation. You know, Jensen Wong of Nvidia has talked about how this will be the year of robotics. Google, Gemini just applied their models to robotics. There's startups like figure there's, again, Tesla with their optimists, and, yeah, there's a whole strain of thought that we're about to see, like home robotics, perhaps a dream from like, the 50s. I think this is a very Disney World esque Epcot Center, yeah, with this idea of jetsy, yeah, of having home robots doing work. You can see concept videos a figure like doing the actual vacuuming. I mean, we invented Roombas to this, but, but it also, I, you know, I've done a lot of work. Our own thinking around electric delivery vehicles. We could talk a lot about drones. We could talk a lot about the little robots that deliver meals on the sidewalk. There's a lot of money in business models about increasing access and people needing to maybe move less, to drive and do all these trips to bring it to them. And that's a form of home automation, and that's all batteries. That is all stuff off the grid too. So AI is that enable those things, these things that can think and move and fly and do stuff and do services on your behalf, and so people might find this huge new source of demand from that as well.   Trevor Freeman  15:29 Yeah, that's I hadn't really thought about the idea that all the all these sort of conveniences and being able to summon them to our homes cause us to move around less, which also impacts transportation, which is another area I kind of want to get to. And I know you've, you've talked a little bit about E mobility, so where do you see that going? And then, how does AI accelerate that transition, or accelerate things happening in that space?   Greg Lindsay  15:56 Yeah, I mean, I again, obviously the EV revolutions here Canada like, one of the epicenters Canada, Norway there, you know, that still has the vehicle rebates and things. So, yeah. I mean, we've seen, I'm here in Montreal, I think we've got, like, you know, 30 to 13% of sales is there, and we've got our 2035, mandate. So, yeah. I mean, you see this push, obviously, to harness all of Canada's clean, mostly hydro electricity, to do this, and, you know, reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for either, you know, Climate Change Politics reasons, but also just, you know, variable energy prices. So all of that matters. But, you know, I think the key to, like the electric mobility revolution, again, is, is how it's going to merge with AI and it's, you know, it's not going to just be the autonomous, self driving car, which is sort of like the horseless carriage of autonomy. It's gonna be all this other stuff, you know. My friend Dan Hill was in China, and he was thinking about like, electric scooters, you know. And I mentioned this to hydro Ottawa, like, the electric scooter is one of the leading causes of how we've taken internal combustion engine vehicles offline across the world, mostly in China, and put people on clean electric motors. What happens when you take those and you make those autonomous, and you do it with, like, deep seek and some cameras, and you sort of weld it all together so you could have a world of a lot more stuff in motion, and not just this world where we have to drive as much. And that, to me, is really exciting, because that changes, like urban patterns, development patterns, changes how you move around life, those kinds of things as well. That's that might be a little farther out, but, but, yeah, this sort of like this big push to build out domestic battery industries, to build charging points and the sort of infrastructure there, I think it's going to go in direction, but it doesn't look anything like, you know, a sedan or an SUV that just happens to be electric.   Trevor Freeman  17:33 I think that's a the step change is change the drive train of the existing vehicles we have, you know, an internal combustion to a battery. The exponential change is exactly what you're saying. It's rethinking this.   Greg Lindsay  17:47 Yeah, Ramesam and others have pointed out, I mean, again, like this, you know, it's, it's really funny to see this pushback on EVs, you know. I mean, I love a good, good roar of an internal combustion engine myself, but, but like, you know, Ramesam was an energy analyst, has pointed out that, like, you know, EVS were more cost competitive with ice cars in 2018 that's like, nearly a decade ago. And yeah, the efficiency of electric motors, particularly regenerative braking and everything, it just blows the cost curves away of ice though they will become the equivalent of keeping a thorough brat around your house kind of thing. Yeah, so, so yeah, it's just, it's that overall efficiency of the drive train. And that's the to me, the interesting thing about both electric motors, again, of autonomy is like, those are general purpose technologies. They get cheaper and smaller as they evolve under Moore's Law and other various laws, and so they get to apply to more and more stuff.   Trevor Freeman  18:32 Yeah. And then when you think about once, we kind of figure that out, and we're kind of already there, or close to it, if not already there, then it's opening the door to those other things you're talking about. Of, well, do we, does everybody need to have that car in their driveway? Are we rethinking how we're actually just doing transportation in general? And do we need a delivery truck? Or can it be delivery scooter? Or what does that look like?   Greg Lindsay  18:54 Well, we had a lot of those discussions for a long time, particularly in the mobility space, right? Like, and like ride hailing, you know, like, oh, you know, that was always the big pitch of an Uber is, you know, your car's parked in your driveway, like 94% of the time. You know, what happens if you're able to have no mobility? Well, we've had 15 years of Uber and these kinds of services, and we still have as many cars. But people are also taking this for mobility. It's additive. And I raised this question, this notion of like, it's just sort of more and more, more options, more availability, more access. Because the same thing seems to be going on with energy now too. You know, listeners been following along, like the conversation in Houston, you know, a week or two ago at Sarah week, like it's the whole notion of energy realism. And, you know, there's the new book out, more is more is more, which is all about the fact that we've never had an energy transition. We just kept piling up. Like the world burned more biomass last year than it did in 1900 it burned more coal last year than it did at the peak of coal. Like these ages don't really end. They just become this sort of strata as we keep piling energy up on top of it. And you know, I'm trying to sound the alarm that we won't have an energy transition. What that means for climate change? But similar thing, it's. This rebound effect, the Jevons paradox, named after Robert Stanley Jevons in his book The question of coal, where he noted the fact that, like, England was going to need more and more coal. So it's a sobering thought. But, like, I mean, you know, it's a glass half full, half empty in many ways, because the half full is like increasing technological options, increasing changes in lifestyle. You can live various ways you want, but, but, yeah, it's like, I don't know if any of it ever really goes away. We just get more and more stuff,   Trevor Freeman  20:22 Exactly, well. And, you know, to hear you talk about the robotics side of things, you know, looking at the home, yeah, more, definitely more. Okay, so we talked about kind of home automation. We've talked about transportation, how we get around. What about energy management? And I think about this at the we'll talk about the utility side again in a little bit. But, you know, at my house, or for my own personal use in my life, what is the role of, like, sort of machine learning and AI, when it comes to just helping me manage my own energy better and make better decisions when it comes to energy? ,   Greg Lindsay  20:57 Yeah, I mean, this is where it like comes in again. And you know, I'm less and less of an expert here, but I've been following this sort of discourse evolve. And right? It's the idea of, you know, yeah, create, create. This the set of tools in your home, whether it's solar panels or batteries or, you know, or Two Way Direct, bi directional to the grid, however it works. And, yeah, and people, you know, given this option of savings, and perhaps, you know, other marketing messages there to curtail behavior. You know? I mean, I think the short answer the question is, like, it's an app people want, an app that tell them basically how to increase the efficiency of their house or how to do this. And I should note that like, this has like been the this is the long term insight when it comes to like energy and the clean tech revolution. Like my Emery Levin says this great line, which I've always loved, which is, people don't want energy. They want hot showers and cold beer. And, you know, how do you, how do you deliver those things through any combination of sticks and carrots, basically like that. So, So, hence, why? Like, again, like, you know, you know, power walls, you know, and, and, and, you know, other sort of AI controlled batteries here that basically just sort of smooth out to create the sort of optimal flow of electrons into your house, whether that's coming drive directly off the grid or whether it's coming out of your backup and then recharging that the time, you know, I mean, the surveys show, like, more than half of Canadians are interested in this stuff, you know, they don't really know. I've got one set here, like, yeah, 61% are interested in home energy tech, but only 27 understand, 27% understand how to optimize them. So, yeah. So people need, I think, perhaps, more help in handing that over. And obviously, what's exciting for the, you know, the utility level is, like, you know, again, aggregate all that individual behavior together and you get more models that, hope you sort of model this out, you know, at both greater scale and ever more fine grained granularity there. So, yeah, exactly. So I think it's really interesting, you know, I don't know, like, you know, people have gamified it. What was it? I think I saw, like, what is it? The affordability fund trust tried to basically gamify AI energy apps, and it created various savings there. But a lot of this is gonna be like, as a combination like UX design and incentives design and offering this to people too, about, like, why you should want this and money's one reason, but maybe there's others.   Trevor Freeman  22:56 Yeah, and we talk about in kind of the utility sphere, we talk about how customers, they don't want all the data, and then have to go make their own decisions. They want those decisions to be made for them, and they want to say, look, I want to have you tell me the best rate plan to be on. I want to have you automatically switch me to the best rate plan when my consumption patterns change and my behavior chat patterns change. That doesn't exist today, but sort of that fast decision making that AI brings will let that become a reality sometime in the future,   Greg Lindsay  23:29 And also in theory, this is where LLMs come into play. Is like, you know, to me, what excites me the most about that is the first time, like having a true natural language interface, like having being able to converse with an, you know, an AI, let's hopefully not chat bot. I think we're moving out on chat bots, but some sort of sort of instantiation of an AI to be like, what plan should I be on? Can you tell me what my behavior is here and actually having some sort of real language conversation with it? Not decision trees, not event statements, not chat bots.   Trevor Freeman  23:54 Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we've kind of teased around this idea of looking at the utility levels, obviously, at hydro Ottawa, you referenced this just a minute ago. We look at all these individual cases, every home that has home automation or solar storage, and we want to aggregate that and understand what, what can we do to help manage the grid, help manage all these new energy needs, shift things around. So let's talk a little bit about the role that AI can play at the utility scale in helping us manage the grid.   Greg Lindsay  24:28 All right? Well, yeah, there's couple ways to approach it. So one, of course, is like, let's go back to, like, smart meters, right? Like, and this is where I don't know how many hydro Ottawa has, but I think, like, BC Hydro has like, 2 million of them, sometimes they get politicized, because, again, this gets back to this question of, like, just, just how much nanny state you want. But, you know, you know, when you reach the millions, like, yeah, you're able to get that sort of, you know, obviously real time, real time usage, real time understanding. And again, if you can do that sort of grid management piece where you can then push back, it's visual game changer. But, but yeah. I mean, you know, yeah, be. See hydro is pulling in. I think I read like, like, basically 200 million data points a day. So that's a lot to train various models on. And, you know, I don't know exactly the kind of savings they have, but you can imagine there, whether it's, you know, them, or Toronto Hydro, or hydro Ottawa and others creating all these monitoring points. And again, this is the thing that bedells me, by the way, just philosophically about modern life, the notion of like, but I don't want you to be collecting data off me at all times, but look at what you can do if you do It's that constant push pull of some sort of combination of privacy and agency, and then just the notion of like statistics, but, but there you are, but, but, yeah, but at the grid level, then I mean, like, yeah. I mean, you can sort of do the same thing where, like, you know, I mean, predictive maintenance is the obvious one, right? I have been writing about this for large enterprise software companies for 20 years, about building these data points, modeling out the lifetime of various important pieces equipment, making sure you replace them before you have downtime and terrible things happen. I mean, as we're as we're discussing this, look at poor Heathrow Airport. I am so glad I'm not flying today, electrical substation blowing out two days of the world's most important hub offline. So that's where predictive maintenance comes in from there. And, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I again, you know, modeling out, you know, energy flow to prevent grid outages, whether that's, you know, the ice storm here in Quebec a couple years ago. What was that? April 23 I think it was, yeah, coming up in two years. Or our last ice storm, we're not the big one, but that one, you know, where we had big downtime across the grid, like basically monitoring that and then I think the other big one for AI is like, Yeah, is this, this notion of having some sort of decision support as well, too, and sense of, you know, providing scenarios and modeling out at scale the potential of it? And I don't think, I don't know about this in a grid case, but the most interesting piece I wrote for Fast Company 20 years ago was an example, ago was an example of this, which was a fledgling air taxi startup, but they were combining an agent based model, so using primitive AI to create simple rules for individual agents and build a model of how they would behave, which you can create much more complex models. Now we could talk about agents and then marrying that to this kind of predictive maintenance and operations piece, and marrying the two together. And at that point, you could have a company that didn't exist, but that could basically model itself in real time every day in the life of what it is. You can create millions and millions and millions of Monte Carlo operations. And I think that's where perhaps both sides of AI come together truly like the large language models and agents, and then the predictive machine learning. And you could basically hydro or others, could build this sort of deep time machine where you can model out all of these scenarios, millions and millions of years worth, to understand how it flows and contingencies as well. And that's where it sort of comes up. So basically something happens. And like, not only do you have a set of plans, you have an AI that has done a million sets of these plans, and can imagine potential next steps of this, or where to deploy resources. And I think in general, that's like the most powerful use of this, going back to prediction machines and just being able to really model time in a way that we've never had that capability before. And so you probably imagine the use is better than I.   Trevor Freeman  27:58 Oh man, it's super fascinating, and it's timely. We've gone through the last little while at hydro Ottawa, an exercise of updating our playbook for emergencies. So when there are outages, what kind of outage? What's the sort of, what are the trigger points to go from, you know, what we call a level one to a level two to level three. But all of this is sort of like people hours that are going into that, and we're thinking through these scenarios, and we've got a handful of them, and you're just kind of making me think, well, yeah, what if we were able to model that out? And you bring up this concept of agents, let's tease into that a little bit explain what you mean when you're talking about agents.   Greg Lindsay  28:36 Yeah, so agentic systems, as the term of art is, AI instantiations that have some level of autonomy. And the archetypal example of this is the Stanford Smallville experiment, where they took basically a dozen large language models and they gave it an architecture where they could give it a little bit of backstory, ruminate on it, basically reflect, think, decide, and then act. And in this case, they used it to plan a Valentine's Day party. So they played out real time, and the LLM agents, like, even played matchmaker. They organized the party, they sent out invitations, they did these sorts of things. Was very cute. They put it out open source, and like, three weeks later, another team of researchers basically put them to work writing software programs. So you can see they organized their own workflow. They made their own decisions. There was a CTO. They fact check their own work. And this is evolving into this grand vision of, like, 1000s, millions of agents, just like, just like you spin up today an instance of Amazon Web Services to, like, host something in the cloud. You're going to spin up an agent Nvidia has talked about doing with healthcare and others. So again, coming back to like, the energy implications of that, because it changes the whole pattern. Instead of huge training runs requiring giant data centers. You know, it's these agents who are making all these calls and doing more stuff at the edge, but, um, but yeah, in this case, it's the notion of, you know, what can you put the agents to work doing? And I bring this up again, back to, like, predictive maintenance, or for hydro Ottawa, there's another amazing paper called virtual in real life. And I chatted with one of the principal authors. It created. A half dozen agents who could play tour guide, who could direct you to a coffee shop, who do these sorts of things, but they weren't doing it in a virtual world. They were doing it in the real one. And to do it in the real world, you took the agent, you gave them a machine vision capability, so added that model so they could recognize objects, and then you set them loose inside a digital twin of the world, in this case, something very simple, Google Street View. And so in the paper, they could go into like New York Central Park, and they could count every park bench and every waste bin and do it in seconds and be 99% accurate. And so agents were monitoring the landscape. Everything's up, because you can imagine this in the real world too, that we're going to have all the time. AIS roaming the world, roaming these virtual maps, these digital twins that we build for them and constantly refresh from them, from camera data, from sensor data, from other stuff, and tell us what this is. And again, to me, it's really exciting, because that's finally like an operating system for the internet of things that makes sense, that's not so hardwired that you can ask agents, can you go out and look for this for me? Can you report back on this vital system for me? And they will be able to hook into all of these kinds of representations of real time data where they're emerging from, and give you aggregated reports on this one. And so, you know, I think we have more visibility in real time into the real world than we've ever had before.   Trevor Freeman  31:13 Yeah, I want to, I want to connect a few dots here for our listeners. So bear with me for a second. Greg. So for our listeners, there was a podcast episode we did about a year ago on our grid modernization roadmap, and we talked about one of the things we're doing with grid modernization at hydro Ottawa and utilities everywhere doing this is increasing the sensor data from our grid. So we're, you know, right now, we've got visibility sort of to our station level, sometimes one level down to some switches. But in the future, we'll have sensors everywhere on our grid, every switch, every device on our grid, will have a sensor gathering data. Obviously, you know, like you said earlier, millions and hundreds of millions of data points every second coming in. No human can kind of make decisions on that, and what you're describing is, so now we've got all this data points, we've got a network of information out there, and you could create this agent to say, Okay, you are. You're my transformer agent. Go out there and have a look at the run temperature of every transformer on the network, and tell me where the anomalies are, which ones are running a half a degree or two degrees warmer than they should be, and report back. And now I know hydro Ottawa, that the controller, the person sitting in the room, knows, Hey, we should probably go roll a truck and check on that transformer, because maybe it's getting end of life. Maybe it's about to go and you can do that across the entire grid. That's really fascinating,   Greg Lindsay  32:41 And it's really powerful, because, I mean, again, these conversations 20 years ago at IoT, you know you're going to have statistical triggers, and you would aggregate these data coming off this, and there was a lot of discussion there, but it was still very, like hardwired, and still very Yeah, I mean, I mean very probabilistic, I guess, for a word that went with agents like, yeah, you've now created an actual thing that can watch those numbers and they can aggregate from other systems. I mean, lots, lots of potential there hasn't quite been realized, but it's really exciting stuff. And this is, of course, where that whole direction of the industry is flowing. It's on everyone's lips, agents.   Trevor Freeman  33:12 Yeah. Another term you mentioned just a little bit ago that I want you to explain is a digital twin. So tell us what a digital twin is.   Greg Lindsay  33:20 So a digital twin is, well, the matrix. Perhaps you could say something like this for listeners of a certain age, but the digital twin is the idea of creating a model of a piece of equipment, of a city, of the world, of a system. And it is, importantly, it's physics based. It's ideally meant to represent and capture the real time performance of the physical object it's based on, and in this digital representation, when something happens in the physical incarnation of it, it triggers a corresponding change in state in the digital twin, and then vice versa. In theory, you know, you could have feedback loops, again, a lot of IoT stuff here, if you make changes virtually, you know, perhaps it would cause a change in behavior of the system or equipment, and the scales can change from, you know, factory equipment. Siemens, for example, does a lot of digital twin work on this. You know, SAP, big, big software companies have thought about this. But the really crazy stuff is, like, what Nvidia is proposing. So first they started with a digital twin. They very modestly called earth two, where they were going to model all the weather and climate systems of the planet down to like the block level. There's a great demo of like Jensen Wong walking you through a hurricane, typhoons striking the Taipei, 101, and how, how the wind currents are affecting the various buildings there, and how they would change that more recently, what Nvidia is doing now is, but they just at their big tech investor day, they just partner with General Motors and others to basically do autonomous cars. And what's crucial about it, they're going to train all those autonomous vehicles in an NVIDIA built digital twin in a matrix that will act, that will be populated by agents that will act like people, people ish, and they will be able to run millions of years of autonomous vehicle training in this and this is how they plan to catch up to. Waymo or, you know, if Tesla's robotaxis are ever real kind of thing, you know, Waymo built hardwired like trained on real world streets, and that's why they can only operate in certain operating domain environments. Nvidia is gambling that with large language models and transformer models combined with digital twins, you can do these huge leapfrog effects where you can basically train all sorts of synthetic agents in real world behavior that you have modeled inside the machine. So again, that's the kind, that's exactly the kind of, you know, environment that you're going to train, you know, your your grid of the future on for modeling out all your contingency scenarios.   Trevor Freeman  35:31 Yeah, again, you know, for to bring this to the to our context, a couple of years ago, we had our the direcco. It's a big, massive windstorm that was one of the most damaging storms that we've had in Ottawa's history, and we've made some improvements since then, and we've actually had some great performance since then. Imagine if we could model that derecho hitting our grid from a couple different directions and figure out, well, which lines are more vulnerable to wind speeds, which lines are more vulnerable to flying debris and trees, and then go address that and do something with that, without having to wait for that storm to hit. You know, once in a decade or longer, the other use case that we've talked about on this one is just modeling what's happening underground. So, you know, in an urban environments like Ottawa, like Montreal, where you are, there's tons of infrastructure under the ground, sewer pipes, water pipes, gas lines, electrical lines, and every time the city wants to go and dig up a road and replace that road, replace that sewer, they have to know what's underground. We want to know what's underground there, because our infrastructure is under there. As the electric utility. Imagine if you had a model where you can it's not just a map. You can actually see what's happening underground and determine what makes sense to go where, and model out these different scenarios of if we underground this line or that line there. So lots of interesting things when it comes to a digital twin. The digital twin and Agent combination is really interesting as well, and setting those agents loose on a model that they can play with and understand and learn from. So talk a little bit about.   Greg Lindsay  37:11 that. Yeah. Well, there's a couple interesting implications just the underground, you know, equipment there. One is interesting because in addition to, like, you know, you know, having captured that data through mapping and other stuff there, and having agents that could talk about it. So, you know, next you can imagine, you know, I've done some work with augmented reality XR. This is sort of what we're seeing again, you know, meta Orion has shown off their concept. Google's brought back Android XR. Meta Ray Bans are kind of an example of this. But that's where this data will come from, right? It's gonna be people wearing these wearables in the world, capturing all this camera data and others that's gonna be fed into these digital twins to refresh them. Meta has a particularly scary demo where you know where you the user, the wearer leaves their keys on their coffee table and asks metas, AI, where their coffee where their keys are, and it knows where they are. It tells them and goes back and shows them some data about it. I'm like, well, to do that, meta has to have a complete have a complete real time map of your entire house. What could go wrong. And that's what all these companies aspire to of reality. So, but yeah, you can imagine, you know, you can imagine a worker. And I've worked with a startup out of urban X, a Canada startup, Canadian startup called context steer. And you know, is the idea of having real time instructions and knowledge manuals available to workers, particularly predictive maintenance workers and line workers. So you can imagine a technician dispatched to deal with this cut in the pavement and being able to see with XR and overlay of like, what's actually under there from the digital twin, having an AI basically interface with what's sort of the work order, and basically be your assistant that can help you walk you through it, in case, you know, you run into some sort of complication there, hopefully that won't be, you know, become like, turn, turn by turn, directions for life that gets into, like, some of the questions about what we wanted out of our workforce. But there's some really interesting combinations of those things, of like, you know, yeah, mapping a world for AIS, ais that can understand it, that could ask questions in it, that can go probe it, that can give you advice on what to do in it. All those things are very close for good and for bad.   Trevor Freeman  39:03 You kind of touched on my next question here is, how do we make sure this is all in the for good or mostly in the for good category, and not the for bad category you talk in one of the papers that you wrote about, you know, AI and augmented reality in particular, really expanding the attack surface for malicious actors. So we're creating more opportunities for whatever the case may be, if it's hacking or if it's malware, or if it's just, you know, people that are up to nefarious things. How do we protect against that? How do we make sure that our systems are safe that the users of our system. So in our case, our customers, their data is safe, their the grid is safe. How do we make sure that?   Greg Lindsay  39:49 Well, the very short version is, whatever we're spending on cybersecurity, we're not spending enough. And honestly, like everybody who is no longer learning to code, because we can be a quad or ChatGPT to do it, I. Is probably there should be a whole campaign to repurpose a big chunk of tech workers into cybersecurity, into locking down these systems, into training ethical systems. There's a lot of work to be done there. But yeah, that's been the theme for you know that I've seen for 10 years. So that paper I mentioned about sort of smart homes, the Internet of Things, and why people would want a smart home? Well, yeah, the reason people were skeptical is because they saw it as basically a giant attack vector. My favorite saying about this is, is, there's a famous Arthur C Clarke quote that you know, any sufficiently advanced technology is magic Tobias Ravel, who works at Arup now does their head of foresight has this great line, any sufficiently advanced hacking will feel like a haunting meaning. If you're in a smart home that's been hacked, it will feel like you're living in a haunted house. Lights will flicker on and off, and systems will turn and go haywire. It'll be like you're living with a possessed house. And that's true of cities or any other systems. So we need to do a lot of work on just sort of like locking that down and securing that data, and that is, you know, we identified, then it has to go all the way up and down the supply chain, like you have to make sure that there is, you know, a chain of custody going back to when components are made, because a lot of the attacks on nest, for example. I mean, you want to take over a Google nest, take it off the wall and screw the back out of it, which is a good thing. It's not that many people are prying open our thermostats, but yeah, if you can get your hands on it, you can do a lot of these systems, and you can do it earlier in the supply chain and sorts of infected pieces and things. So there's a lot to be done there. And then, yeah, and then, yeah, and then there's just a question of, you know, making sure that the AIs are ethically trained and reinforced. And, you know, a few people want to listeners, want to scare themselves. You can go out and read some of the stuff leaking out of anthropic and others and make clot of, you know, models that are trying to hide their own alignments and trying to, like, basically copy themselves. Again, I don't believe that anything things are alive or intelligent, but they exhibit these behaviors as part of the probabilistic that's kind of scary. So there's a lot to be done there. But yeah, we worked on this, the group that I do foresight with Arizona State University threat casting lab. We've done some work for the Secret Service and for NATO and, yeah, there'll be, you know, large scale hackings on infrastructure. Basically the equivalent can be the equivalent can be the equivalent to a weapons of mass destruction attack. We saw how Russia targeted in 2014 the Ukrainian grid and hacked their nuclear plans. This is essential infrastructure more important than ever, giving global geopolitics say the least, so that needs to be under consideration. And I don't know, did I scare you enough yet? What are the things we've talked through here that, say the least about, you know, people being, you know, tricked and incepted by their AI girlfriends, boyfriends. You know people who are trying to AI companions. I can't possibly imagine what could go wrong there.   Trevor Freeman  42:29 I mean, it's just like, you know, I don't know if this is 15 or 20, or maybe even 25 years ago now, like, it requires a whole new level of understanding when we went from a completely analog world to a digital world and living online, and people, I would hope, to some degree, learned to be skeptical of things on the internet and learned that this is that next level. We now need to learn the right way of interacting with this stuff. And as you mentioned, building the sort of ethical code and ethical guidelines into these language models into the AI. Learning is pretty critical for our listeners. We do have a podcast episode on cybersecurity. I encourage you to go listen to it and reassure yourself that, yes, we are thinking about this stuff. And thanks, Greg, you've given us lots more to think about in that area as well. When it comes to again, looking back at utilities and managing the grid, one thing we're going to see, and we've talked a lot about this on the show, is a lot more distributed generation. So we're, you know, the days of just the central, large scale generation, long transmission lines that being the only generation on the grid. Those days are ending. We're going to see more distributed generations, solar panels on roofs, batteries. How does AI help a utility manage those better, interact with those better get more value out of those things?   Greg Lindsay  43:51 I guess that's sort of like an extension of some of the trends I was talking about earlier, which is the notion of, like, being able to model complex systems. I mean, that's effectively it, right, like you've got an increasingly complex grid with complex interplays between it, you know, figuring out how to basically based on real world performance, based on what you're able to determine about where there are correlations and codependencies in the grid, where point where choke points could emerge, where overloading could happen, and then, yeah, basically, sort of building that predictive system to Basically, sort of look for what kind of complex emergent behavior comes out of as you keep adding to it and and, you know, not just, you know, based on, you know, real world behavior, but being able to dial that up to 11, so to speak, and sort of imagine sort of these scenarios, or imagine, you know, what, what sort of long term scenarios look like in terms of, like, what the mix, how the mix changes, how the geography changes, all those sorts of things. So, yeah, I don't know how that plays out in the short term there, but it's this combination, like I'm imagining, you know, all these different components playing SimCity for real, if one will.   Trevor Freeman  44:50 And being able to do it millions and millions and millions of times in a row, to learn every possible iteration and every possible thing that might happen. Very cool. Okay. So last kind of area I want to touch on you did mention this at the beginning is the the overall power implications of of AI, of these massive data centers, obviously, at the utility, that's something we are all too keenly aware of. You know, the stat that that I find really interesting is a normal Google Search compared to, let's call it a chat GPT search. That chat GPT search, or decision making, requires 10 times the amount of energy as that just normal, you know, Google Search looking out from a database. Do you see this trend? I don't know if it's a trend. Do you see this continuing like AI is just going to use more power to do its decision making, or will we start to see more efficiencies there? And the data centers will get better at doing what they do with less energy. What is the what does the future look like in that sector?   Greg Lindsay  45:55 All the above. It's more, is more, is more! Is the trend, as far as I can see, and every decision maker who's involved in it. And again, Jensen Wong brought this up at the big Nvidia Conference. That basically he sees the only constraint on this continuing is availability of energy supplies keep it going and South by Southwest. And in some other conversations I've had with bandwidth companies, telcos, like laying 20 lumen technologies, United States is laying 20,000 new miles of fiber optic cables. They've bought 10% of Corning's total fiber optic output for the next couple of years. And their customers are the hyperscalers. They're, they're and they're rewiring the grid. That's why, I think it's interesting. This has something, of course, for thinking about utilities, is, you know, the point to point Internet of packet switching and like laying down these big fiber routes, which is why all the big data centers United States, the majority of them, are in north of them are in Northern Virginia, is because it goes back to the network hub there. Well, lumen is now wiring this like basically this giant fabric, this patchwork, which can connect data center to data center, and AI to AI and cloud to cloud, and creating this entirely new environment of how they are all directly connected to each other through some of this dedicated fiber. And so you can see how this whole pattern is changing. And you know, the same people are telling me that, like, yeah, the where they're going to build this fiber, which they wouldn't tell me exactly where, because it's very tradable, proprietary information, but, um, but it's following the energy supplies. It's following the energy corridors to the American Southwest, where there's solar and wind in Texas, where you can get natural gas, where you can get all these things. It will follow there. And I of course, assume the same is true in Canada as we build out our own sovereign data center capacity for this. So even, like deep seek, for example, you know, which is, of course, the hyper efficient Chinese model that spooked the markets back in January. Like, what do you mean? We don't need a trillion dollars in capex? Well, everyone's quite confident, including again, Jensen Wong and everybody else that, yeah, the more efficient models will increase this usage. That Jevons paradox will play out once again, and we'll see ever more of it. To me, the question is, is like as how it changes? And of course, you know, you know, this is a bubble. Let's, let's, let's be clear, data centers are a bubble, just like railroads in 1840 were a bubble. And there will be a bust, like not everyone's investments will pencil out that infrastructure will remain maybe it'll get cheaper. We find new uses for it, but it will, it will eventually bust at some point and that's what, to me, is interesting about like deep seeking, more efficient models. Is who's going to make the wrong investments in the wrong places at the wrong time? But you know, we will see as it gathers force and agents, as I mentioned. You know, they don't require, as much, you know, these monstrous training runs at City sized data centers. You know, meta wanted to spend $200 billion on a single complex, the open AI, Microsoft, Stargate, $500 billion Oracle's. Larry Ellison said that $100 billion is table stakes, which is just crazy to think about. And, you know, he's permitting three nukes on site. So there you go. I mean, it'll be fascinating to see if we have a new generation of private, private generation, right, like, which is like harkening all the way back to, you know, the early electrical grid and companies creating their own power plants on site, kind of stuff. Nicholas Carr wrote a good book about that one, about how we could see from the early electrical grid how the cloud played out. They played out very similarly. The AI cloud seems to be playing out a bit differently. So, so, yeah, I imagine that as well, but, but, yeah, well, inference happen at the edge. We need to have more distributed generation, because you're gonna have AI agents that are going to be spending more time at the point of request, whether that's a laptop or your phone or a light post or your autonomous vehicle, and it's going to need more of that generation and charging at the edge. That, to me, is the really interesting question. Like, you know, when these current generation models hit their limits, and just like with Moore's law, like, you know, you have to figure out other efficiencies in designing chips or designing AIS, how will that change the relationship to the grid? And I don't think anyone knows quite for sure yet, which is why they're just racing to lock up as many long term contracts as they possibly can just get it all, core to the market.   Trevor Freeman  49:39 Yeah, it's just another example, something that comes up in a lot of different topics that we cover on this show. Everything, obviously, is always related to the energy transition. But the idea that the energy transition is really it's not just changing fuel sources, like we talked about earlier. It's not just going from internal combustion to a battery. It's rethinking the. Relationship with energy, and it's rethinking how we do things. And, yeah, you bring up, like, more private, massive generation to deal with these things. So really, that whole relationship with energy is on scale to change. Greg, this has been a really interesting conversation. I really appreciate it. Lots to pack into this short bit of time here. We always kind of wrap up our conversations with a series of questions to our guests. So I'm going to fire those at you here. And this first one, I'm sure you've got lots of different examples here, so feel free to give more than one. What is a book that you've read that you think everybody should read?   Greg Lindsay  50:35 The first one that comes to mind is actually William Gibson's Neuromancer, which is which gave the world the notion of cyberspace and so many concepts. But I think about it a lot today. William Gibson, Vancouver based author, about how much in that book is something really think about. There is a digital twin in it, an agent called the Dixie flatline. It's like a former program where they cloned a digital twin of him. I've actually met an engineering company, Thornton Thomas Eddie that built a digital twin of one of their former top experts. So like that became real. Of course, the matrix is becoming real the Turing police. Yeah, there's a whole thing in there where there's cops to make sure that AIS don't get smarter. I've been thinking a lot about, do we need Turing police? The EU will probably create them. And so that's something where you know the proof, again, of like science fiction, its ability in world building to really make you think about these implications and help for contingency planning. A lot of foresight experts I work with think about sci fi, and we use sci fi for exactly that reason. So go read some classic cyberpunk, everybody.   Trevor Freeman  51:32 Awesome. So same question. But what's a movie or a show that you think everybody should take a look at?   Greg Lindsay  51:38 I recently watched the watch the matrix with ideas, which is fun to think about, where the villains are, agents that villains are agents. That's funny how that terms come back around. But the other one was thinking about the New Yorker recently read a piece on global demographics and the fact that, you know, globally, less and less children. And it made several references to Alfonso Quons, Children of Men from 2006 which is, sadly, probably the most prescient film of the 21st Century. Again, a classic to watch, about imagining in a world where we don't where you where you lose faith in the future, what happens, and a world that is not having children as a world that's losing faith in its own future. So that's always haunted me.   Trevor Freeman  52:12 It's funny both of those movies. So I've got kids as they get, you know, a little bit older, a little bit older, we start introducing more and more movies. And I've got this list of movies that are just, you know, impactful for my own adolescent years and growing up. And both matrix and Children of Men are on that list of really good movies that I just need my kids to get a little bit older, and then I'm excited to watch with them. If someone offered you a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go?   Greg Lindsay  52:40 I would go to Venice, Italy for the Architecture Biennale, which I will be on a plane in May, going to anyway. And the theme this year is intelligence, artificial, natural and collective. So it should be interesting to see the world's brightest architects. Let's see what we got. But yeah, Venice, every time, my favorite city in the world.   Trevor Freeman  52:58 Yeah, it's pretty wonderful. Who is someone that you admire?   Greg Lindsay  53:01 Great question.

In this episode, Todd continues dismantling the transformation of modern political movements into ideological religions—complete with dogma, heresy, excommunication, and a mob-ready priesthood of online enforcers. Drawing on figures like H.L. Mencken, Joan Didion, Noam Chomsky, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, he explores how belief systems—left and right—have become substitute faiths, powered by dopamine, hashtags, and performative outrage. Todd weaves in cognitive science (via Nicholas Carr and neuroplasticity), propaganda theory (via Jacques Ellul and Edward Bernays), and personal experience to reveal how the digital age has eroded attention spans, critical thought, and individual conscience. Social media becomes the new pulpit. Echo chambers replace dialogue. Heresy now means thinking for yourself. At the core is a warning: intellectual autonomy now requires personal and moral courage. The courage to be disliked. To reject tribalism. To say, “That's bullshit”—especially when it comes from your own side. From Mencken's skewering of revivalist mobs to the modern cancellation of NPR apostate Uli Berliner, Todd paints a bleak but brutally honest picture of conformity culture, urging listeners to reclaim their minds—even if it means exile. This is not a feel-good sermon. It's a call to arms for the heretical unicorn.   *Recorded in Southwest Michigan and blasting worldwide on WBCQ 7490 starting next week! Details inside.   Like it? Rate, review, and share it? Hate it? Embrace equity! Listen anyhow! More: https://toddzillax.substack.com/ Vids: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A/?themeRefresh=1    

Weaving together current events, political polarization, and the power of storytelling over facts, this episode explores the fragility of democracy in the digital age. Todd examines insights from George Washington, Walter Lippmann, Jonathan Gottschall, and Nicholas Carr, questioning whether media literacy or ethical gatekeeping can overcome our tribal instincts. This episode offers a candid look at the roots of division and the possibly futile search for solutions in a hyper-connected world. Major Segments with Time Cues - 00:00:00] Introduction and podcast rebrand announcement - [00:01:00] Jeffrey Epstein news and political implications - [00:06:40] Challenges facing democracy and ideological threats - [00:12:00] George Washington on factions and foreign interference - [00:21:00] Jonathan Gottschall's storytelling theory and democracy - [00:24:00] Nicholas Carr on digital media's divisive effects - [00:39:00] Potential solutions: media literacy, gatekeeping, safeguards? - [00:55:00] Podcast platform changes and rebranding plans   Like it? Rate, review, and share it?  Hate it? Embrace equity! Listen anyhow!   More: https://toddzillax.substack.com/ Vids: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A/?themeRefresh=1    

Doomscrolling, algorithms, artificial intelligence—these concepts have become so familiar to us and such a part of our everyday monotony that they've become jokes. But Nicholas Carr isn't laughing.  Carr's work in tech journalism has given him a front-row seat to watch the shift of culture around technology over the last decade. His recent book, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, explores his observations—and the news isn't great. Online platforms and algorithms seem to know us better than our churches, families, or friends do—especially when the products we glanced at for a fleeting moment now fill our timelines and social media feeds. But we already knew that, right?  And still we face obstacles to capture our own conscious minds. Carr's work is a call for a cultural revolution to reclaim the human experience from the clutches of technology. Especially when what's at stake is the understanding of community, which finds its roots in the ability to focus to form empathy for others. This conversation shines a light on the profound need for deeper connections and the importance of attention in fostering meaningful relationships. Moore and Carr also talk about the mirage of screens as socialization, an AI priest (whose story doesn't end well), positive outcomes from machines and technology (gasp! Is it possible?), and the way separating from technology might feel an awful lot like excommunication.  If you need to be emboldened to cut your screen time or make a change in the way you use technology for your sake and the sake of future generations, this conversation may be the thing you need. Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include: Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr “The Vacation” Wendell Berry poem The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

معرفی کتابسوپربلوم یا رشد انفجاری گل‌ها نام آخرین کتاب نیکلاس کار پژوهشگر و نویسنده آمریکایی است. پیش‌تر از نیکلاس کار کتاب‌هایی بنام "کم عمق‌ها" و "قفس شیشه‌ای" به فارسی چاپ شده است. در این اثر آخر نویسنده به تاثیر شبکه‌های اجتماعی بر رفتار جمعی و بین فردی ما می‌پردازد.کار مدعی است که خوش بینی اولیه که اگر افراد به انفجار اطلاعات و ارتباطات گسترده دسترسی ارزان و فراگیر داشته‌ باشند بسرعت بسوی همدلی و تفاهم-بعنوان مثال آنگونه که مارک زاکربرگ در ابتدای گسترش فیس‌بوک نوید آنرا داده بود-خواهند رفت به حقیقت نپیوسته است.با وجود فایده‌های زیاد، شبکه‌های اجتماعی در بخش‌هایی منجر به قطبی شدن و افزایش تنش در انسان‌ها شده‌اند.‌رشد شدید اطلاعات و ارتباطات بین فردی باعث می‌شود نوعی کمبود توجه و نیاز به ارزیابی سریع در افراد گسترش یابد. توجه و تمرکز کالایی ارزشمند و کمیاب می‌شود. برای جبران آن تکیه بر کلیشه‌ها و پردازش‌های سریع که در بسیاری از موارد آکنده از پیش داوری است، رونق می‌یابند و پیام‌هایی فراگیر می‌شوند که بار هیجانی بیشتری دارند. با تسهیل فرایند کپی و به اشتراک گذاشتن توسط شهروندان، شاهد روندی از افزایش خشونت کلامی و موارد خلاف واقع هستیم.او مدعی است که بعنوان مثال در عصر نامه نگاری کاغذی یا حتی قبل از ابداع کلید تویئت مجدد در شبکه تویئتر حجم اشتراک گذاری موارد هیجانی خلاف واقع به نسبت کمتر بوده‌است.در نامه نگاری کلاسیک، افراد قبل از پاسخ فرصت نوعی تامل و تجربه آگاهی از خویشتن را داشتند اما در نظام‌های فعلی یک اقدام تکانه‌ایی در به اشتراک گذاری یک پست، خبر یا پیام، شما را به جمع ترویج دهندگان انفجاری وارد می‌کند. الگوریتم‌های شبکه‌های اجتماعی نیز بنوعی هستند که به این پدیده دامن می‌زنند.همچنین بتدریج افراد پیام‌ها و باورهای همسو با اعتقادات خود را به دوستان و آشنایان همفکر ارجاع می‌دهند و هسته‌های متراکم غیرقابل نفوذ باوری بوجود می‌آیند.به همین دلیل در سال‌های اخیر شاهد سوپربلوم یا شکوفا شدن دردسرساز عقاید، باورها و سوگیری‌های مخرب هستیم.او یکی از راهکارهای مقابله با این انفجارها را ایجاد نوعی "اصطکاک" جهت کُند و تامل گونه کردن در تصمیم‌گیری افراد در تایید (لایک) یا به اشتراک گذاری مطالب می‌داند.درباره این کتاب که هنوز ترجمه فارسی از آن موجود نیست، این هفته در برنامه زنده صحبت خواهم کرد.در ضمن بدنبال ترجمه‌ایی برای اصطلاح "سوپربلوم" باشیم.Superbloom: How technologies of connection tear us apart Nicholas Carr, W. W. Norton 2025------------ منابع تکمیلی -----------بحثی درباره‌ی کتاب تناقض داستان: • بحثی درباره‌ی کتاب تناقض داستان | بخش اول ... ------------ پلتفرم‌های دیگر جهت دسترسی به مطالب ----------Telegram: https://t.me/DrAzarakhshMokriInstagram: / azarakhshmokri دکتر آذرخش مکریروانپزشکروانپزشکی#دکتر_آذرخش_مکری

Largely inspired by a strange trip to the dentist and Nicholas Carr's new book, Superbloom, Todd returns from his latest covert CIA mission to delve into how we've all been lied to: it turns out "sharing" more actually doesn't make people like you! Also, the disillusioning effects of abandoning comforting stories for naked truth. And why most instinctively avoid it.   Buy Superbloom! https://a.co/d/7bj93Zl   Like it? Rate, review, share! More: https://toddzillax.substack.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A/?themeRefresh=1

The late biologist E.O. Wilson said that “the real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous.” Wilson said that back in 2011, long before any of us were talking about large language models or GPTs. A little more than a decade later, artificial intelligence is already completely transforming our world. Practitioners and experts have compared A.I. to the advent of electricity and fire itself. “God-like” doesn't seem that far off. Even sober experts predict disease cures and radically expanded lifespans, real-time disaster prediction and response, the elimination of language barriers, and other earthly miracles. A.I. is amazing, in the truest sense of that word. It is also leading some to predict nothing less than a crisis in what it means to be human in an age of brilliant machines. Others—including some of the people creating this technology—predict our possible extinction as a species. But you don't have to go quite that far to imagine the way it will transform our relationship toward information and our ability to pursue the truth. For tens of thousands of years, since humans started to stand upright and talk to each other, we've found our way to wisdom through disagreement and debate. But in the age of A.I., our sources of truth are machines that spit out the information we already have, reflecting our biases and our blind spots. What happens to truth when we no longer wrestle with it—and only receive it passively? When disagreeable, complicated human beings are replaced with A.I. chatbots that just tell us what we want to hear? It makes today's concerns about misinformation and disinformation seem quaint. Our ability to detect whether something is real or an A.I.-generated fabrication is approaching zero. And unlike social media—a network of people that we instinctively know can be wrong—A.I. systems have a veneer of omniscience, despite being riddled with the biases of the humans who trained them. Meanwhile, a global arms race is underway, with the U.S. and China competing to decide who gets to control the authoritative information source of the future. So last week Bari traveled to San Francisco to host a debate on whether this remarkable, revolutionary technology will enhance our understanding of the world and bring us closer to the truth . . .or do just the opposite. The resolution: The Truth Will Survive Artificial Intelligence! Aravind Srinivas argued yes—the truth will survive A.I. Aravind is the CEO of one of the most exciting companies in this field, Perplexity, which he co-founded in 2022 after working at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind.  Aravind was joined by Dr. Fei-Fei Li. Fei-Fei is a professor of computer science at Stanford, the founding co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered A.I., and the CEO and co-founder of World Labs, an A.I. company focusing on spatial intelligence and generative A.I.  Jaron Lanier argued that no, the truth will not survive A.I. Jaron is a computer scientist, best-selling author, and the founder of VPL Research, the first company to sell virtual reality products. Jaron was joined by Nicholas Carr, the author of countless best-selling books on the human consequences of technology, including Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows, The Glass Cage, and, most recently, Superbloom. He also writes the wonderful Substack New Cartographies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, joins Mark Labberton to discuss the seismic political, moral, cultural, and spiritual crises facing American evangelicalism and how to respond. Reflecting on his own journey from the Southern Baptist Convention to his current role, Moore offers a candid and theologically rich diagnosis of a movement he describes as simultaneously fragmented, bored, and longing for renewal. Drawing parallels to historical awakenings and moments of global upheaval, Moore challenges listeners to consider what faithful Christian witness looks like in a time of digital saturation, political idolatry, and ecclesial disillusionment. Together, they wrestle with how evangelical institutions can resist becoming co-opted by market forces or ideologies, and instead return to the soul of the gospel—Jesus himself. Episode Highlights “We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture.” (Russell Moore) “The good news is so clouded with distorted noise.” (Mark Labberton) “You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem.” (Wendall Berry, cited by Russell Moore) “Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication.” (Nicholas Carr, cited by Russell Moore) “Christian Nationalism is like ‘Bizarro Evangelicalism' … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness.” (Russell Moore) Karl Barth on Christian disillusionment during World War I: “We  we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened.” … “ He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God.” About Russell Moore Russell Moore is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin Random House). The Wall Street Journal has called Moore “vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate.” He was named in 2017 to Politico Magazine's list of top fifty influence-makers in Washington, and has been profiled by such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, **and the New Yorker. An ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and, before that, as the chief academic officer and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics. Moore was a Fellow at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics and currently serves on the board of the Becket Law and as a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C. He also hosts the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show and is co-host of Christianity Today's weekly news and analysis podcast, The Bulletin. Russell was President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2013 to 2021. Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics. A native Mississippian, he and his wife Maria are the parents of five sons. They live in Nashville, where he teaches the Bible regularly at their congregation, Immanuel Church. Show Notes Comparing Christianity Today and Fuller Theological Seminary Religious reconsiderations post-World War II “My grandfather was blown out of a tank by the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge and came back. He went an unbeliever, came back really feeling his mortality and, and searching for answers. And ended up at a revival meeting where he came to know Christ.” A false choice presented to Christians: “You had this false choice being presented to Christians … you either go with an ever narrowing, ever quarrelsome sort of group of fundamentalists or you liberalize.” Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr. The recent history of Evangelical Christianity A Movement in Crisis: What is the state of Evangelicalism in America? Revival preachers and entrepreneurialism: a religious, market-driven reality “Lifelessness and deadness” “ I can't think of a single church that has split over Christology. Most of the arguments have to do with politics and, and related sort of cultural issues because that's what people really care about and what they really think often is important.” Tumult of the digital economy Alienation, dehumanization: “We can simultaneously think of ourselves as gods and as sets of data and algorithms.” Speed of change and life Teaching ethics: a final exam question students have never thought about How to prepare people for ethical problems and real-life challenges Mental health crisis: “high rates of depression and anxiety driven by a piece of glass that everybody carries in his or her pocket that can connect that person with all of the information in the entire world.” 100 years since the invention and use of the microphone No microphones, but extraordinary voices “The dials are askew, because the sound that evangelicalism is evoking in so many quadrants is a sound that is hostile and grading and brash and arrogant.” “The good news is so clouded with distorted noise.” Secularization How Evangelicalism appeals to people: End Times Prophecy, Marriage and Family Values, and Shocking Attention-Grabbing “Real life takes on the characteristics of the internet.” Wendall Berry: “You mistakenly think that the solution has to be at the same scale as the problem.” Can you give us some hope? “Hope that is seen is not hope. Instead, there's suffering that creates endurance. Endurance that creates character, character that creates hope, and hope does not put to shame.” Ezekiel and the valley of the dry bones What is the work of Christianity Today right now? Redefining who is “us.” Who is the “we” of Evangelicalism? “We simply want Jesus as revealed in scripture.” 2 Corinthians 4: “The glory of God reflected in the face of Jesus Christ.” Karl Barth and disillusionment during World War I: “We  we want to preach the gospel as though nothing has happened.” … “ He's saying the church is being co-opted and used by forces alien to it. And there have to be people who are free from that to actually appeal to the genuine gospel and to remind people that God is God.” How to cultivate freedom “One of the major challenges to a freedom is loss of attention.” “I have to be free from the constant whirl—and what he meant at the time was the radio, you know, which is nothing compared to what we have—because my attention is necessary for me to be able to serve and to give.” “Kingdom of God is like yeast.” Waiting, attention, and a longer view of time “How do you then hold onto this freedom that we're describing in a way of connected disconnectedness or disconnected connectedness or something?” Nicholas Carr: “Every person has to have an act of willful excommunication.” Revelation and the Book of Daniel: “Seal all this up for now. … Don't worry about it.” Nebuchadnezzar demanding  that. Shadrach, Mishak, and Abednego bow down and worship the golden statue. Evangelical Pastors: Preaching the Bible versus advocating a political vision Galatians 1 and 2—Paul's not yielding to false teachers in order to preserve the Gospel New Apostolic Reformation Christian Nationalism: “Bizarro Evangelicalism … i f you can get external conformity, then you have righteousness.” “Blood mysticism” Jonathan Rauch's Cross Purposes Keeping guard up in conversations with disagreement “Simply asking for Christians to be who we say we are.” Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Welcome to episode #975 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Nicholas Carr has long been one of the most important voices questioning how technology is shaping our minds, our communication, and our culture (and a personal favorite). His latest book, Superbloom - How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, builds on the themes he's explored in The Shallows and The Glass Cage, offering a critical look at how our obsession with constant connectivity may be eroding human relationships rather than strengthening them. In this conversation, Nick challenges the assumption that more communication automatically leads to greater understanding, explaining how friction in conversation is necessary for thoughtful interactions. We discussed the rise of dissimilarity cascades - how exposure to differing viewpoints can sometimes increase polarization rather than bridge divides - and why the utopian vision of digital communication often clashes with human nature. Nick also highlights the psychological toll of constant connectivity, particularly among younger generations, and the unintended consequences of social media's influence on work, leisure, and personal identity. As AI continues to reshape communication, he raises important questions about authenticity, the risk of society becoming skeptical of everything, and the broader shift toward efficiency at the cost of deeper human values. His perspective is always thought-provoking, and this conversation is no exception. If you want to rethink how you engage with technology in your daily life, this episode is a must-listen. You should also check out his excellent Substack newsletter, New Cartographies. Enjoy the conversation... Running time: 1:01:14. Hello from beautiful Montreal. Listen and subscribe over at Apple Podcasts. Listen and subscribe over at Spotify. Please visit and leave comments on the blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. Check out ThinkersOne. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on X. Here is my conversation with Nicholas. Superbloom - How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. The Shallows. The Glass Cage. New Cartographies. This week's music: David Usher 'St. Lawrence River'. Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction to Nicholas Carr and His Work. (03:13) - Thematic Connections in Carr's Books. (06:10) - The Misconception of Communication Technology. (08:46) - Human Nature vs. Technology: A Conflict. (11:54) - The Impact of Online Communication on Empathy. (14:47) - The Dangers of Digital Disconnection. (17:59) - Parental Influence on Children's Technology Use. (20:47) - The Social Dynamics of Smartphone Usage. (24:09) - The Rise of Anxiety and Loneliness in Youth. (27:07) - The Concept of Influencers and Work in the Digital Age. (34:24) - The Misconception of Leisure vs. Work. (35:34) - Rethinking Our Relationship with Technology. (39:03) - The Dangers of Blind Adaptation. (42:00) - AI: A Revolutionary Shift in Communication. (47:30) - The Impact of AI on Human Expression. (56:09) - The Original Sin of Efficiency Over Humanity.

Pour vous abonner à ma newsletter : https://hop.kessel.media/Il y a quelques jours, je me suis inscrit dans une nouvelle salle de sport. Une décision anodine mais si je vous en parle, c'est que mon critère décisif de choix en surprendrait plus d'un : son café ! Alors pourquoi je vous raconte ça ? Après treize années en tant qu'indépendant, j'ai appris à apprécier la liberté d'organiser mon temps, cette capacité à façonner mes journées selon mes envies.J'ai toujours choisi des appartements me permettant de faire cela dans les meilleures conditions et pourtant, la solitude des journées commence à peser.Partageant la raison principale de mon inscription dans cette gym avec mon ami John Krakauer, neuroscientifique américain reconnu, il m'a répondu par une formule qui résonne comme un diagnostic de notre époque : "we need to practice humans".En français dans le texte « Nous devons pratiquer l'art d'être humain ».A priori un non-sens et pourtant c'est tout l'inverse.Comme un muscle qui s'atrophie faute d'exercice, de manière insidieuse, notre capacité à créer du lien se délite dans le confort de notre isolement choisi.D'ailleurs, j'ai reçu sur Vlan ! une chercheuse du MIT, Valérie Gauthier pour nous aider à récréer du dialogue si cela vous intéresse.Cette semaine j'ai envie d'explorer ce que le magazine « The Atlantic » a justement nommé de « siècle anti-social ». Mais alors c'est quoi le paradoxe de notre solitude moderne ?La langue anglaise, dans sa précision, distingue "solitude" de "loneliness".Le premier terme décrit un choix enrichissant, une pause réparatrice. Le second évoque une forme d'isolement toxique, un repli qui nous éloigne de notre nature profondément sociale.Notre langue française peine à capturer cette nuance essentielle - "isolement" porte une connotation trop négative pour traduire fidèlement ce "loneliness" contemporain que nous nous imposons collectivement.Alors attentin, ressentir de la solitude est une réponse saine, comme le souligne le sociologue Eric Klinenberg.C'est cette énergie qui m'a poussé vers cette salle de sport, ce besoin viscéral de reconnecter avec le monde.Mais voilà le paradoxe de notre époque : nous répondons au sentiment de solitude par davantage de solitude, dans une spirale qui nous éloigne toujours plus les uns des autres.Les chiffres racontent une histoire paradoxale de notre temps.Pour chaque heure passée en présence d'autrui hors de chez soi, l'Américain moyen en passe 7 devant sa télévision.La fréquence des dîners entre amis a chuté de 45% entre 1970 et les années 2000.Nous croyons chercher le bien-être dans cette retraite, mais les études en psychologie moderne révèlent une réalité contre-intuitive : nous sommes particulièrement mauvais pour identifier ce qui nous rend véritablement heureux.En fait ce que l'on nomme le Me-time a un vrai coté sombre !!! Je vous explique ca !! Une expérience fascinante menée à Chicago par le psychologue Nick Epley l'illustre parfaitement. Il a demandé aux usagers du métro d'imaginer leur trajet idéal : la majorité a opté pour un voyage silencieux et solitaire, considérant qu'une conversation avec un inconnu serait désagréable.L'expérience a prouvé exactement l'inverse - les interactions, même brèves, ont significativement amélioré leur bien-être et plus longues étaient ces dernières, meilleur était l'impact.C'est ce que les chercheurs appellent le "paradoxe de la connexion sociale" : nous fuyons précisément ce qui pourrait nous rendre plus heureux.Pourtant même dans un espace social tel que le métro nous nous enfermons dans l'isolement de nos écouteurs qui annulent le bruit ou simplement en plaçant l'écran glacé de notre téléphone entre soi et les autres.Et ce qui est mauvais pour notre santé mentale fini par également être mauvais pour notre santé physique comme le prouvent de nombreuses études sur la longévité.Etre utile à sa communauté comme me le rappelait Jean-Marc Lemaître, Directeur de recherche à l'Inserm, est fondamental. Et par ailleurs il y a un prix politique à notre deconnexion sociale ! je vous explique Cette citation de Deleuze prend ici tout son sens : "Le pouvoir exige des corps tristes. Le pouvoir a besoin de tristesse parce qu'il peut la dominer. La joie est résistance, parce qu'elle n'abandonne pas."Sans verser dans le complotisme, l'idée n'est pas dire que le pouvoir en place nous invite à rester chez nous mais force est de constater que notre isolement volontaire fragilise le tissu social.Nous renforçons nos liens avec ceux qui pensent comme nous, tandis que notre seule exposition à des opinions divergentes se fait à travers le prisme déformant des algorithmes des reseaux sociaux.La nuance qu'apportait une discussion au café du commerce, la modération qu'insufflait une conversation avec un voisin de palier, tout cela s'efface progressivement.Trump a parfaitement profité de cette situation et l'a renforcé en créant son propre réseau social ironiquement appelé « Truth social » (selon le Washington Post, durant son 1er mandat il a menti 30 573 fois soit 21 mensonges par jour en moyenne - cqfd).Situation encore renforcée avec un Musk prenant la main sur X évidemment.Comme l'explique le sociologue Dunkelman, "si la famille nous apprend l'amour, la tribu nous apprend la loyauté et le village nous apprend la tolérance."Sans ce village, nous perdons notre capacité à comprendre des narratifs différents des nôtres.La réalité c'est que parler avec des personnes bienveillantes ayant des opinions légèrement différentes des nôtres permet de se modérer politiquement automatiquement.A partir du moment où nous n'avons plus d'interactions avec nos voisins, nous n'arrivons plus à nous connecter à la nuance et cela donne envie de renverser la table.D'ailleurs, cette déconnexion sociale est aussi en partie ce qui explique l'incompréhension chez les démocrates aux U.S. qui continuaient à parler des minorités invisibilisées quand la majorité des Américains n'arrivaient pas à joindre les 2 bouts.Nous ne parlons plus avec les mêmes faits ni les mêmes vérités quand nous pourrions être relativement d'accord la plupart du temps comme l'a prouvé la convention citoyenne en France.Mais dans cette période particulièrement dystopique, ce que j'observe surtout, c'est ce besoin de se réfugier avec un besoin croissant de se divertir.Or on le sait, l'extrême-droite gagne faute de participants, le nihilisme gagne partout et est particulièrement dangereux.Alors on écoute des podcasts d'humour ou léger, on regarde des séries et tout cela renforce le temps passé seul.C'est assez classique de gérer le stress à travers une forme d'isolement mais en réalité cela est inversement proportionnel à notre niveau de bonheur.Même nos rituels sociaux ont été touché mais l‘avez-vous réalisé ? Dans les années 1970, le foyer américain moyen recevait des amis plus d'une fois par mois. Aujourd'hui, ces rituels de socialisation s'effritent. Les livraisons à domicile représentent désormais 74% du trafic des restaurants aux U.S., transformant des lieux de convivialité en simples points de collecte.Cette évolution reflète une transformation plus profonde de notre rapport au temps et à l'espace. Entre 1965 et 1995, nous avons gagné collectivement six heures de temps libre par semaine - soit 300 heures par an.Au lieu d'investir ce temps dans des activités sociales, nous l'avons massivement réinvesti dans les écrans.Un choix qui semblait offrir plus de liberté mais qui, paradoxalement, nous a enfermés dans une nouvelle forme de solitude.Et je dois confesser, non sans gêne, que mon propre compteur est probablement plus élevé que les 30% de temps éveillé moyen passés devant un écran.Plus inquiétant, les études démontrent une corrélation directe : plus nous passons de temps devant nos écrans, moins nous sommes naturellement attirés par l'engagement social.Certes, une partie de ce temps d'écran est supposément "sociale", mais partager des liens TikTok ne remplace pas la richesse d'une conversation en face à face.Même dans le couple, il arrive régulièrement qu'un écran s'interfère entre les 2 personnes, la psychologue Esther Perel m'a parlé alors de solitude paradoxale dans cet épisode de Vlan !Vous n'êtes pas seul mais vous ressentez un sentiment d'ignorance qui parfois peut avoir des impacts délétères. Et alors si vous avez des enfants, l'impact chez les ado est halluninante Oui ! La transformation est encore plus frappante chez les jeunes générations.Les statistiques révèlent une réalité troublante : ils sont moins nombreux à vouloir passer leur permis, à sortir en "date", ou même simplement à voir des amis en dehors de l'école.Ils font moins de bêtises, ont moins de relations sexuelles, restent dans leurs chambres et quand ils sont en famille, mettent un écran entre eux et leurs parents.Le nombre d'adolescents qui voient quotidiennement un ami hors du cadre scolaire a chuté de 50% par rapport à 1990.L'anxiété atteint des sommets, particulièrement chez les jeunes filles, dont près de 50% rapportent une tristesse persistante.Ce n'est plus seulement une redéfinition de l'adolescence à laquelle nous assistons, mais une transformation profonde de sa psychologie même.Comme l'explique Nicholas Carr, nous avons perdu cette frontière salutaire entre "être seul" et "être dans la foule". Notre solitude est constamment parasitée par le flux ininterrompu des réseaux sociaux, créant un état paradoxal : plus connectés que jamais, mais aussi plus anxieux et épuisés.Un phénomène qui explique peut-être cette tendance étrange sur TikTok à célébrer l'annulation de diners ou de plans sociaux. Et alors il y a un truc que je n'avais pas du tout vu venir De manière surprenante - du moins pour moi - la courbe du bonheur est inversement proportionnelle au confort que nous construisons dans nos maisons, comme le note le sociologue Patrick Sharkey.Plus nous y sommes confortables moins nous voulons en sortir et plus nous nous recroquevillons sur nous-même.D'ailleurs, il note qu'un changement profond s'est opéré dans la conception même de nos espaces de vie. Les architectes ne débattent plus de la luminosité des pièces ou de l'ouverture des espaces, mais du nombre d'écrans qu'on peut y installer – il faut désormais s'assurer que l'on peut accrocher un écran dans chaque pièce.Le confort moderne s'est transformé en cocon digital, dessinant une architecture intrinsèquement antisociale.Les "routines matinale" exhibées sur les réseaux sociaux illustrent parfaitement cette mutation.Ces vidéos, souvent réalisée par des personnes fortunées au physique mettent en scène une existence quasi monacale : méditation matinale, séance de journaling, repas healthy, yoga... mais étrangement, pas trace d'enfants, de conjoint ou d'amis.La présence de l'autre y est souvent perçue comme une nuisance, une interruption dans cette chorégraphie parfaitement orchestrée du "me-time". Et ca pourrait être pire demain si on ne se réveille pasNotre fuite vers le digital pourrait bientôt prendre une nouvelle dimension avec l'émergence des IA conversationnelles.J'ai ce pressentiment que les réseaux sociaux traditionnels vont perdre du terrain au profit des conversations avec des intelligences artificielles.Cela peut sembler relever de la science-fiction, mais je le vois venir inexorablement.Le plus troublant n'est pas que nous ne réalisions pas parler à une machine - nous le savons parfaitement.Non, ce qui inquiète, c'est que nous choisissions consciemment ces interlocuteurs artificiels. La raison est simple : l'IA ne nous challenge jamais, elle nous valide constamment et reste disponible 24/7, sans le moindre jugement.Une facilité qui nous éloigne encore davantage de la complexité enrichissante des relations humaines.La prescription est pourtant simple pour quiconque évalue son bien-être en dessous de 7/10 : privilégier les appels téléphoniques aux messages texte, oser la conversation avec des inconnus dans un café, s'engager dans de nouvelles activités pour rencontrer des personnes ou simplement travailler depuis un espace social pour les indépendants.Ces petits pas peuvent sembler insignifiants, mais ils sont le début d'une transformation profonde.C'est précisément ce qui m'a poussé à choisir cette salle de sport avec mon amie Fatou.Un simple rituel matinal qui devient une norme, qui elle-même se transforme en valeur, pour finalement redéfinir mes comportements.Car au fond, tout commence par ces petits choix quotidiens.Face à ce défi, il ne s'agit pas simplement de nostalgie pour un monde pré-numérique.Notre besoin de connexion humaine n'est pas un luxe ou une option - c'est une nécessité vitale pour notre espèce.Les études démontrent invariablement que contrairement à nos croyances modernes, une plus grande maison, une voiture de luxe, ou un salaire doublé au prix de notre temps libre ne font que générer plus d'anxiété.Le véritable paradoxe de notre époque réside dans cette conviction que ce dont nous avons le plus besoin est du temps seul (« me-time).C'est peut-être la plus grande erreur de notre génération.Nous possédons d'innombrables opportunités de nous connecter les uns aux autres, et pourtant nous les rejetons systématiquement, une par une, jour après jour."Pratiquer l'humain" n'est donc pas un simple exercice de « développement personnel » - c'est un acte de résistance contre l'atomisation de notre société.Chaque conversation initiée, chaque sourire échangé, chaque moment de présence authentique compte. Ces interactions peuvent sembler insignifiantes face à l'ampleur du défi, mais elles sont les fils qui retissent le tissu social effiloché.Pour paraphraser Deleuze une dernière fois, la joie que nous procurent les vraies connexions humaines nous emmène dans des endroits où la tristesse de l'isolement ne nous mènerait jamais.Peut-être que la vraie révolution de notre époque serait simplement de redécouvrir le courage d'être présent les uns pour les autres, de cultiver ces petits moments d'humanité partagée qui, finalement, donnent tout son sens à notre existence.Car au fond, ce n'est pas tant la technologie qui nous isole que nos choix quotidiens.Et chacun de ces choix est une opportunité de réinventer notre façon d'être ensemble.Alors la prochaine fois que vous hésitez entre commander une livraison ou aller au restaurant, entre envoyer un message ou passer un appel, entre rester chez vous ou rejoindre des amis, rappelez-vous : ce n'est pas juste un choix pratique, c'est un choix de société.Et peut-être même, un choix de civilisation.

‘We live today in a perpetual superbloom – not of flowers but of messages' –- Nicholas Carr   In this episode we explore the hidden costs of constant connection with American journalist and writer Nicholas Carr.  Best known for his New York Times bestselling book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Carr discusses his latest book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. In conversation with writer and researcher Adam McCauley, Carr shows us how platforms such as Facebook and X which promised to democratise information and foster greater understanding have instead fueled tribalism, misinformation, and social fragmentation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Constant connection comes at a price. Social media doesn't bring out our better angels, but instead feeds our worst instincts says writer and author Nicholas Carr. But he says blaming technology isn't the answer and regulation isn't going to change human nature. He explains why he believes it's too late to fix the internet, but we can do something about ourselves His new book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart.

Why do you feel cold sometimes? The obvious answer is that you feel cold when you ARE cold. But could it also be that you feel cold because someone else is cold? In other words, is feeling cold contagious? Listen as this episode begins with explanation. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11340277/If-this-picture-makes-you-feel-cold-you-may-be-a-victim-of-temperature-contagion.html We tend to measure wealth in dollars. But financial wealth is only one of five types of wealth. There is also social wealth, time wealth, physical wealth and mental wealth – and they are essential to living a satisfying life. That is according to my guest, Sahil Bloom. He is a writer and content creator who reaches millions of people every week through his insights and biweekly newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle. He is also the managing partner of SRB Ventures, an early-stage investment fund and author of the book The 5 Types of Wealth A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life (https://amzn.to/4hoFRiv) . Listen as Sahil explains the different types of wealth and how to make sure you are rich in all of them. While it is true that the Internet is great at bringing people together, it is also great at driving us apart. It seems that digital technology is just not compatible with the way our brains are designed to work, according to my guest Nicholas Carr. Nicholas writes for the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal and he is the author of a book called, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart (https://amzn.to/4gpMGz7). Listen as he reveals the damage being done to all of us by technology and how not to fall victim. Nasal congestion – feeling stuffy, is very common. And yet, it is difficult to treat effectively because it is not what people think it is. Listen as I reveal what that feeling of stuffiness really is and what you can do to help minimize the sensation. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111013184803.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! SHOPIFY:  Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! CURIOSITY WEEKLY: We love Curiosity Weekly, so be sure and listen wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ravi welcomes Nicholas Carr to discuss his thought-provoking new book, Superbloom, which examines how social media and digital communication have reshaped human relationships and society. They dive into the history of communication technologies and explore the deeper issues of modern society's dependence on these tools. Carr challenges the idea that more communication is always better, stressing the need for balance between digital interaction and real human connection. The conversation also touches on legal frameworks governing digital communication, the challenges of regulation, and the role of both individual and collective responsibility in managing the age of digital distraction, division, and constant information overload. Together, they explore possible paths forward for a healthier relationship with technology. Leave us a voicemail with your thoughts on the show! 321-200-0570 Follow Ravi on Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/ravimgupta --- Follow Ravi at @ravimgupta Follow The Branch at @thebranchmedia Notes from this episode are available on Substack: https://thelostdebate.substack.com/ Lost Debate is available on the following platforms:  • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lost-debate/id1591300785 • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7xR9pch9DrQDiZfGB5oF0F • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LostDebate • Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vTERJNTc1ODE3Mzk3Nw  • iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-lost-debate-88330217/ • Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/752ca262-2801-466d-9654-2024de72bd1f/the-lost-debate

Faster, easier communication was supposed to make the world better. Instead, it made us miserable. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? For answers, we turn to Nicholas Carr, author of the new book “Superbloom.”

Faster, easier communication was supposed to make the world better. Instead, it made us miserable. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? For answers, we turn to Nicholas Carr, author of the new book “Superbloom.”

Michael welcomes Nicholas Carr, author of "Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart," a bracing exploration of how social media has warped our sense of self and society. From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. A celebrated commentator on the human consequences of technology, Nicholas Carr reorients the conversation around modern communication, challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about self-expression, free speech, and media democratization. Original air date 30 January 2025. The book was published on 28 January 2025.

The social-media grounds are shifting. In recent weeks, there have been major developments at platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Meanwhile, more and more experts are raising alarm bells about the harms of social media on society and our mental health. To understand how we got here and what might come next, Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu spoke with Nicholas Carr, author of the book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, who has been writing about the human consequences of technology for decades.

There has been a lot of cultural discussion of the way digital technologies and social media contribute to things like political polarization and adolescent depression.But as I'll explore with Nicholas Carr, the author of Superbloom, our digital tools are also changing our ability to connect with others and our sense of self in less appreciated ways.Today on the show, Nicholas unpacks why the optimistic idea that more communication is always better hasn't panned out and how the speed and volume of modern communication is overwhelming our human capacity to process information and maintain meaningful relationships. We discuss why the "messiness" of pre-digital communication might have actually been better for us, how email has evolved from thoughtful letters to rushed messages, and why seeing more of people online often makes us like them less. Nicholas also explains why having different versions of ourselves for different contexts was actually healthy and the simple rubric for better managing our relationship with digital communication tools.Resources Related to the PodcastNicholas' previous appearances on the AoM podcast:Episode #276: Utopia is CreepyEpisode #632: How the Internet Makes Our Minds ShallowCharles Horton CooleyAoM Article: More Than Ever, the Medium Is the MessageConnect With Nicholas CarrNicholas' websiteNicholas' Substack, New Cartographies

Humans love to connect. We're social like that. Whether we're sending telegrams, calling each other on the telephone, or DM'ing each other on the social media platform of our choosing, we're interacting.Whether or not that constant connection is a good thing is another matter entirely. Writer and author Nicholas Carr spends a lot of time thinking about that very question (and others like it). His new book, "Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart," tells a story of the parallel rises of mechanical, efficient electronic communication and mass confusion.But it's not just the fault of tech giants and social media companies. Carr encourages us to look inward and consider how our own psyches play a role. He joins us to talk about the realities of social media and constant connection.Want to support 1A? Give to your local public radio station and subscribe to this podcast. Have questions? Connect with us. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A new book by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Nicholas Carr is always a major event. And today's release of SUPERBLOOM: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart offers a prescient critique of our social media age. As Carr explains, our assumption that more communication leads to better understanding is fundamentally wrong. Instead, he suggests that excessive communication through digital platforms actually tears people apart. Carr's use of the “Superbloom” metaphor refers to an actual 2019 event in Southern California where people flocked to photograph wildflowers for social media, trampling the actual flowers in pursuit of the perfect image. Carr uses this as a metaphor for how we increasingly experience reality through online media rather than directly. Carr challenges the idea that new communication technologies automatically bring people together, noting how previous innovations like the telegraph and telephone came with similar utopian promises that were never fulfilled. He argues that modern smartphones and social media have created an unprecedented environment where we're constantly connected and socializing, which conflicts with how humans evolved to interact in bounded, physical spaces. Rather than offering simple solutions, Carr advocates for more mindful technology use and speculates that future generations might reject constant digital connectivity in favor of more meaningful direct experiences.Nicholas Carr writes about the human consequences of technology. His books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and the forthcoming Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He has recently been a visiting professor of sociology at Williams College, and earlier in his career he was executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. In 2015, he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. He writes the Substack newsletter New Cartographies. A New York Times bestseller when it was first published in 2010 and now hailed as “a modern classic,” Carr's The Shallows remains a touchstone for debates on the internet's effects on our thoughts and perceptions. A second edition of The Shallows, updated with a new chapter, was published in 2020. Carr's 2014 book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us, which the New York Review of Books called a “chastening meditation on the human future,” examines the personal and social consequences of our ever growing dependency on computers, robots, and artificial intelligence. His latest book, Utopia Is Creepy, published in 2016, collects his best essays, blog posts, and other writings from the past dozen years. The collection is “by turns wry and revelatory,” wrote Discover. Carr is also the author of two other influential books, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008), which the Financial Times called “the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing,” and Does IT Matter? (2004).Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Nicholas Carr has been amongst the most persistently prescient observers of the digital revolution over the last quarter century. Take, for example, his 2012 essay "The Arc of Innovation Bends Towards Decadence," which, in many ways, foresaw our current technological and social predicament. Carr's thesis was that technological innovation increasingly moves toward fulfilling self-indulgent desires rather than addressing fundamental human needs, following a pattern similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Carr accurately predicted the shift from idealistic views of technology as tools for self-actualization to their current role in feeding narcissism and anxiety. The timing of his essay proved particularly significant, as 2012 marked a crucial turning point when smartphones became dominant and social media reached mass adoption. This period coincided with what social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt identify as the beginning of a sharp rise in anxiety and decline in self-confidence, especially among young people. Carr's insights extend to current debates about AI, where he sees a potentially "decadent" trend of outsourcing fundamental human activities like writing and thinking to machines. He frames this as part of a broader pattern where technology, instead of enhancing human capabilities (in the manner of Steve Jobs' "bicycle for the mind"), increasingly substitutes for them entirely. Most notably, Carr recognized early on that digital technologies, while promising connection and democratization, often trigger "our worst instincts." His analysis helps explain why, despite growing awareness of social media's negative effects, we remain unable to disentangle ourselves from these technologies - a phenomenon he describes as "mis-wanting." Essential stuff, as always, from the great Nick Carr.Nicholas Carr writes about the human consequences of technology. His books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and the forthcoming Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He has recently been a visiting professor of sociology at Williams College, and earlier in his career he was executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. In 2015, he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. He writes the Substack newsletter New Cartographies. A New York Times bestseller when it was first published in 2010 and now hailed as “a modern classic,” Carr's The Shallows remains a touchstone for debates on the internet's effects on our thoughts and perceptions. A second edition of The Shallows, updated with a new chapter, was published in 2020. Carr's 2014 book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us, which the New York Review of Books called a “chastening meditation on the human future,” examines the personal and social consequences of our ever growing dependency on computers, robots, and artificial intelligence. His latest book, Utopia Is Creepy, published in 2016, collects his best essays, blog posts, and other writings from the past dozen years. The collection is “by turns wry and revelatory,” wrote Discover. Carr is also the author of two other influential books, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008), which the Financial Times called “the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing,” and Does IT Matter? (2004).Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sam's had himself a little skiing accident, but powers through a mild concussion to lead us thorugh a discussion of Christmas gift-giving (with a deviation into the Icelandic Christmas Book Flood) and the joys of reading books written quite a while ago. But don't worry! We're reading stuff from 2024 and 2025, too. It's a wiiiide-ranging chit-chat here in the New Year, with some deep philosophical stuff, and a focus on: - "Anti-Semite and Jew," by John-Paul Sartre (which is in print, thanks Knopf) - "Playground," by Richard Powers - "Superbloom," by Nicholas Carr (who posits Martin Luther as the world's first influencer) - "Heir," by Sabaa Tahir (which we decided is NOT YA; Sam was confusing it with "Black Sun") - "The Forever War," by Joe Haldeman (this is important stuff) - "The World She Edited," by Amy Reading (Katharine White was, indeed, EB White's wife)

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows

Does a surplus of information create a shortage of attention? Are today's young people really unable to focus? And do goldfish need better PR?  SOURCES:Neil Bradbury, professor of physiology at Rosalind Franklin University.Nicholas Carr, writer and journalist.Johann Hari, writer and journalist.Charles Howard, University Chaplain and Vice President for Social Equity & Community at the University of Pennsylvania.Felicity Huntingford, emeritus professor of functional ecology at the university of Glasgow.Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine.Rick Rubin, music producer and record executive.Herbert Simon, professor of computer science and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. RESOURCES:Uncovering Your Path: Spiritual Reflections for Finding Your Purpose, by Charles Lattimore Howard (forthcoming 2025).Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, by Gloria Mark (2023).The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin (2023).Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari (2022)."Quibi's Founder and CEO Explain What Went Wrong," by Jessica Bursztynsky (CNBC, 2020)."Digital Democracy Survey, Eleventh Edition," by Deloitte (2017)."Busting the Attention Span Myth," by Simon Maybin (BBC News, 2017)."Attention Span During Lectures: 8 Seconds, 10 Minutes, or More?" by Neil Bradbury (Advances in Physiology Education, 2016)."Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic, 2008)."Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World," by Herbert Simon (Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest, 1971). EXTRAS:"Multitasking Doesn't Work. So Why Do We Keep Trying?" by Freakonomics Radio (2024)."Rick Rubin on How to Make Something Great," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).

Digital technologies have saturated our lives and there is no going back. Given this, it's worth pondering whether and how they are fundamentally reshaping our mind and our relationships. A seminal work that explores these issues is the 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by journalist Nicholas Carr. In it, he argues that the internet is “shallowing” our brains, meaning that as we offload cognitive tasks to digital tools, our ability to read linearly, to absorb and immerse ourselves in complex information, is reduced. But more than that, the internet curtails our emotional depth and compassion, diminishing our humanity and rendering us more computer-like, as we process information in short bursts, skim for quick answers, and operate with frenetic attention spans. In Carr's 2014 book The Glass Cage, he discusses how the increasing automation of tasks leads to a decrease in human agency, creativity, and problem solving capability.In this episode, Carr joins us to discuss the neuroplasticity of the brain, the mechanisms by which digital technologies reduce our ability to think deeply, how the failures of electronic medical records illustrate the limitations of technology, what social media does to our relationships, the value of focused, reflective thought in a fast paced world, what we can all do to remain independent of technology, and more.In this episode, you'll hear about: 2:42 - Carr's path to researching and writing about the human consequences of technology5:38 - The central thesis of Carr's 2010 book The Shallows 15:27 - Whether the cognitive impacts of digital technologies are reversible or permanent21:18 - Whether society is better or worse off due to social media and the internet25:38 - How modern technology has changed the medical profession 38:22 - Carr's thesis for his upcoming book Superbloom45:21 - How society can address the loss of focus and empathy that has occurred as a result of social media Nicholas Carr can be found on Twitter/X at @roughtype.Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.Copyright The Doctor's Art Podcast 2024

Recorded way back in November of 2020, this episode features Fr John O'Brien SJ calling in from Canada. Father John, son of the Catholic novelist Michael O'Brien, is the Vocations Director for the Jesuits of the “Canada Provence,” and has been a longtime spiritual advisor of the Mary Foundation. Before he became a priest, he worked with the Mary Foundation and notably helped Bud Macfarlane edit his novels. Bud also joins us for the podcast. The three of us discuss Father John's origin story, from editing novels with Bud during the early days of the Mary Foundation all the up to his own vocational journey into the Jesuits, highlighting Christian obedience and receptivity. We also dive at length into the effects of technology on our lives, springboarding from a book called “the Shallows” by Nicholas Carr. We discuss how television, cell phones, and social media influence our enjoyment of life & culture, our brain & concentration, our silence and prayer, as well as our relationships & connection to reality. We finish off by discussing a few strategies to deal with some of these negative effects. --- To order powerful tools for evangelization for your family, friends, and parish, head to the Mary Foundation website at CatholiCity.com.

Vores liv speeder op. Information fra kunstig intelligens bliver serveret i kortere bidder via digitale medier. Den konstante tilstand af at blive forstyrret gør det meget svært at tænke dybt, kritisk og sammenhængende, fordi man hele tiden skal behandle ny information. Hvad gør internettet ved vores hjerner?, spørger den amerikanske skribent og teknologikritiker Nicholas Carr i sin bog "The Shallows". Det bekymrende svar er, at vi ikke kan koncentrere os, og at vi ikke kan lave informationsbombardementet om til varig viden. Vi bliver faktisk bare dummere. Det beskriver Carr i essays som “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” i sin seneste bog "Utopia is Creepy", der en samling af et årtis teknologikritik.  Han besøgte Danmark, men i stedet for at lave et traditionelt interview med Nicholas Carr om hans seneste bog, så valgte Techtopia fem ord eller paradigmer for at se, hvad de sætter i gang i hans hjerne.  De fem ord er data, hastighed, hjernen, the big five (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple og Microsoft) og til sidst singulariteten - altså ideen om at kunstig intelligens vil forandre eller måske overtage verden totalt om få årtier.  Nicholas Carr er forfatter og skriver om teknologi, business og kultur. I 2008 indledte han sin kritik med artiklen ”Is Google making us stupid?”. Senere fulgte bøgerne ”The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brain”, ”The Glass Cage: Automation and Us” og senest “Utopia is Creepy: and Other Provocations”.

A review of the Nicholas Carr book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Even though written over 10 years ago, the studies and examples offered are still relevant as we move in the age of smartphones. Carr details that it isn't just a psychological issue, but physiological as it changes are brain structure. The questions addressed in this episode include, "What is the value of memorization?" and "How has the internet changed education?" It is a great companion to the episode Konnected Kids, a Review of the Jonathan Haidt book The Anxious Generation,

If you like what we're doing and want to support the show, please consider making a donation on Ko-Fi. Funds we receive will be used to upgrade equipment, pay hosting fees, and help make the show better.https://ko-fi.com/mappingthezoneIf you enjoyed our discussion, please check out the following media that relates to these chapters:Films/TV: Primer (2004; dir. Shane Carruth); Motherless Brooklyn (dir. Edward Norton, Jr.)Music: Tiny Desk Unit - Live At the 9:30 Club 1980; Bad Brains - Bad BrainsBooks: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson; Motherless Brooklyn by Johnathan Lethem; The Power Broker by Robert Caro; Amerikastudien: “Bright Days for the Black Market”: Color-Coded Crises in Contemporary U.S. Fiction and the Works of Thomas PynchonAs always, thanks so much for listening!Email: ⁠mappingthezonepod@gmail.com⁠Twitter: https://twitter.com/pynchonpodInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/mappingthezonepodcast/

This week we speak to Nicholas Carr, an esteemed American journalist and author known for his profound insights into technology, business, and culture. Nicholas Carr's acclaimed book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, cementing his reputation as a leading thinker on the cognitive and societal impacts of digital technology.Throughout the episode, Nicholas shares his expert perspective on how the internet and digital technologies are reshaping our brains, behaviors, and societies. The conversation delves deep into the implications of our increasing reliance on digital media and how it affects our attention spans, memory, and overall cognitive function.Main Topics Covered:* The Impact of the Internet on Cognitive Function: Nicholas discusses the central thesis of The Shallows, exploring how the internet is changing the way we think, read, and process information.* Attention and Memory in the Digital Age: An analysis of how constant connectivity and information overload are impacting our ability to focus and retain information.* The Role of Social Media: Insights into how social media platforms are designed to capture and hold our attention, and the psychological effects of this on individuals and society.* Digital Minimalism: Practical advice on how to manage digital consumption to preserve mental well-being and cognitive health.* Future Trends in Technology: Predictions and reflections on the future trajectory of digital technologies and their potential long-term effects on humanity.Nicholas Carr's deep understanding of the intersection between technology and human cognition provides a thought-provoking discussion that challenges listeners to reflect on their own digital habits and consider the broader societal implications of our evolving relationship with technology. Tune in to this episode for an enlightening conversation that bridges the gap between technological advancements and their profound effects on our minds and lives.Lots of love,Dave & Steve xDISCOUNT CODES & SPONSORS:Namawell Juicers are AMAZING! They have absolutely revolutionised the juicing game. We have an exclusive 10% Enter the code HAPPYPEAR10LINK: https://namawell.com/collections/juicers/products/nama-j2-cold-press-juicer?ref=thehappypearVIVOBAREFOOT: Vivobarefoot Footwear have given our listeners an exclusive 2O% discount and if you buy now you also get free access to their incredible course showcasing some of the biggest names in the health and wellness space.Enter the code HAPPYPEAR2OLINK: https://www.vivobarefoot.com/uk/the-happy-pearTHE HAPPY PEAR RECIPE CLUB - Blending health and happiness through a range of over 500 delicious plant-based recipes. LINK: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H06JvgK0Sign up to our Newsletter, for updates on our latest recipes, events and news. LINK: https://share-eu1.hsforms.com/1hKXaawjoQOONmJe4EXkCdwf92pyProduced by Sean Cahill & Sara Fawsitt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're surrounded by uncertainty and we don't like the feeling of not knowing. But there's often hidden strength in some things that make us uncomfortable. Maggie Jackson's new book explores the research that shows that uncertainty is not a weakness, but instead can be a powerful tool for navigating complexity with creativity and adaptability. Maggie Jackson joins us from Rhode Island to discuss her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure and why we should embrace uncertainty as a catalyst for curiosity - and more. ________________________ Bio Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her prescient writings on social trends, particularly technology's impact on humanity. Her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure has been lauded as "remarkable and persuasive" (Library Journal); "trending" (Book Pal); "incisive and timely-triumphant" (Dan Pink); and "both surprising and practical" (Gretchen Rubin). Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain was named a Top 10 Social Sciences book of 2023 by Library Journal and a Top 50 Psychology book of the year by the Next Big Idea Club. The book inspired Jackson's recent lead opinion piece in the New York Times on uncertainty and resilience. Her acclaimed book Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of our tech-centric, attention-deficient modern lives. With a foreword by Bill McKibben, the book reveals the scientific discoveries that can help rekindle our powers of focus in a world of overload and fragmentation. Hailed as “influential” by the New Yorker and compared by Fast Company.com to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Distracted offers a “richly detailed and passionately argued … account of the travails facing an ADD society” (Publishers Weekly) and “concentrates the mind on a real problem of modern life” (The Wall Street Journal). The book is “now more essential than ever,” says Pulitzer finalist Nicholas Carr. Maggie Jackson's essays, commentary, and books have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Philosopher, on National Public Radio, and in media worldwide. She wrote the foreword to Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics (Academic Press, 2019) and has contributed essays to numerous other anthologies, including State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (Templeton, 2015) and The Digital Divide: Arguments For and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking (Penguin, 2011). Her book, What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, was the first to explore the fate of home in the digital age, a time when private life is permeable and portable. Jackson is the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, including a 2016 Bard Graduate Center Visiting Fellowship; Media Awards from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board, the Massachusetts Psychological Association, and the Women's Press Club of New York. For a National Public Radio segment on the lack of labor protections offered to child newspaper carriers, she was a finalist for a Hillman Prize, one of journalism's highest honors for social justice reporting. Jackson has served as an affiliate of the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto; a Journalism Fellow in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland; and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. Her website has been named a Forbes Top 100 Site for Women three times. Jackson is a sought-after speaker, appearing at Harvard Business School, the New York Public Library, the annual invitation-only Forbes CMO summit, the Simmons and other top women's leadership conferences, and other corporations, libraries, hospitals, schools, religious organizations, and bookstores.

Internet está cambiando nuestras vidas y principalmente, nuestros cerebros. La red y las tecnologías desarrolladas a su alrededor han envuelto nuestras vidas y más allá de beneficios o perjuicios, ha provocado cambios en nuestro cerebro. Siguiendo el libro "¿Qué está haciendo Internet en nuestras mentes?" escrito por Nicholas Carr, iremos viendo cómo la tecnología ha cambiado al ser humano a lo largo de la Historia hasta llegar a los tiempos actuales. Hoy el cambio es absoluto y la integración ser humano - máquina está alcanzando un nivel que hace cuestionar nuestro futuro. El mundo de Internet y la forma de leer, trabajar o disfrutar del ocio implica que nos entrenamos en otro tipo de percepciones y formas de trabajo que nos llevan a cambios cerebrales. Como si de otro mundo pasado se tratase, los libros, periódicos, revistas, programas de radio y tv se han transformado para adecuarse a estos nuevos tiempos. La tecnología nos sobrepasa en la mayoría de los casos y se da la paradoja de tener la mayor cantidad de información al alcance de la mano pero tenemos menos conocimientos profundos. Son nuevos tiempos y desafíos a los que se debe enfrentar el ser humano que cuestiona su futuro. Enlaces: Adictos a las pantallas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTB9sjncFFg Los efectos de la tecnología a nuestro cerebro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ePe2r2_z50 Música: Thierry de Massia: -"DleYaman" A.Torres Ruiz: -"El Despertar - ESTADO" -"Amor Verdadero" Maryna: -"Uplifting Emotion Background" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ https://caminosconsciencia.es/podcast/la-evolucion-al-cerebro-digital

Join host Ginny Yurich in a riveting episode of the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast as she engages in a profound conversation with Nicholas Carr, renowned author of "The Shallows." Carr shares insights into the genesis of his book, which began as a personal exploration of the challenges he faced while spending excessive time online. The realization that constant connectivity hindered concentration and fueled distraction led him to delve deeper into the transformative impact of technology on our minds. The discussion unfolds with Carr drawing inspiration from Neil Postman, emphasizing that technology is not merely a tool but an ideology that shapes our environment and influences the way we think and interact. The conversation explores how our communication tools create a new ecology, molding our perceptions and interactions. Carr highlights the inherent distractibility of human beings and how modern technology exacerbates this issue, hijacking our minds and affecting our ability to focus. The episode delves into the ways screens, particularly on computers and phones, alter the reading experience. Carr contrasts the shield of a paper with the distractions surrounding digital words. He discusses the steady stream of information bombarding us, making it challenging to screen out distractions and maintain focus. The impact of technology on attention spans is a central theme, with Carr addressing the addictive nature of smartphones and the constant mental presence of our phones. He shares personal experiences of losing the ability to concentrate and immerse oneself in a book due to excessive online engagement. The conversation expands to societal implications, exploring how technology has changed our perception of time, eroded patience, and altered social dynamics. The influence of screens on reading habits, promoting skimming and scanning, is examined, highlighting the fundamental shift in the way we consume information. Carr also touches upon the societal shift towards instant gratification and the desire for quicker stimuli, evident in the rise of AI companions. The episode concludes with a reflection on the value placed on measurable outcomes, leaving listeners with a deeper understanding of the profound impact of technology on our minds, attention, and societal behaviors. ** Learn more about Nicholas Carr here >> https://www.nicholascarr.com/ Get your copy of The Shallows here >> https://amzn.to/3HmBpAK ** Downloads your free 1000 Hours Outside trackers here >> https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/trackers Find everything you need to kick off your 1000 Hours Outside Journey here >> https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/blog/allthethings Order of copy of Ginny's newest book, Until the Streetlights Come On here >> https://amzn.to/3RXjBlN Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I set my phone down, weary of the constant bombardment of images, ideas, and notifications that the little screen broadcasted. Then, I picked it up and turned it on again. Why? In his 2013 book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr describes how the internet has shaped our relationship with stillness: “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Living life on a mental jet ski doesn’t sound healthy. But how do we begin to slow down, to dive deeply into still spiritual waters? In Psalm 131, David writes, “I have calmed and quieted myself” (v. 2). David’s words remind me that I have responsibility. Changing habits starts with my choice to be still—even if I must make that choice over and over again. Slowly, though, we experience God’s satisfying goodness. Like a little child, we rest in contentment, remembering that He alone offers hope (v. 3), soul-satisfaction that no smartphone app can touch and no social media site can deliver.

EPISODE 141 SEASON 4 | Tune in for the 2nd half of Janna and Nate Noorlander's discussion on media literacy. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg.  How to critically think about the information we are exposed to and define the underlying reason ‘why'. The race is on to use the coupons below for The Nomadic Professor. The first person to enter nomadicsharkSUB gets 75% off the life of the subscription.  The first person to enter nomadicsharkPURCH gets 75% off their first purchase. Offers end August 31, 2023  After those codes are used others can receive 20% off either a single purchase or a subscription using codes: sedentarysharkPURCH or sedentarysharkSUB Offer ends September 31, 2023. ABOUT OUR GUEST | In college, Nate Noorlander double-majored in philosophy and history teaching. After a stint as a project manager with a disaster repair company, he moved to Beijing, China, where he taught IGCSE and A-level history at the Cambridge International Curriculum Center of Beijing Normal University. He also spent time touring India and trekking in Nepal. Worn out by the Beijing air, Nate moved home with his family and taught English and history at Mountainville Academy, and then the American International School of Utah. At AISU he developed mini-courses in boredom and awareness (probably close to what many people call mindfulness) based on Heidegger's ideas about technology, and Nicholas Carr's ideas about what the internet does to our brains, areas of study that (perhaps ironically) he finds compelling. Done in this time by life in the beautiful Mountain West he returned to Beijing, where he taught IB History, IB English, and Theory of Knowledge at the Yew Chung International School of Beijing. When Covid-19 hit he was coaching the boys' basketball team and gearing up for an end-of-season tournament in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, ignorant of what was coming. The trip was canceled, his family just made it out of Beijing on a flight three times its usual cost, and he stuck it out in the shuttered city for another six weeks. When life didn't change, he left too. Since then it's been all history with The Nomadic Professor. LISTENER COUPON CODE ★Request your coupon code to use on any purchase at bookshark.com. QUOTABLES | Nate: Under the surface of media literacy. The five units of the course. Technology design is generating a lot of controversy. Nate: Understanding political bias and the history of media. Understanding partisanship, political bias, and the history and technology of politics in America is important for understanding bias and what motivates a person's reasoning. Nate: Tools to help us understand arguments. Language is where people do things that help us understand arguments. It's best used by people who already have a mature understanding of media and how to read an break down arguments. Nate: Students will learn how to navigate the internet and make judgments about the reliability and credibility of information. Janna: When can we expect the course to be available for purchase?  Nate: One unit is available now with more coming soon. Nate: I would always be asking the question and training my students to ask the question whether they're four years old or 24 years old.  Thanks to show sponsor BookShark. Request a homeschool curriculum catalog or download samples at bookshark.com. If you'd like to share an aha moment, an inspirational quote, a homeschool hack, a book you're loving, or a suggested podcast topic/guest, leave a comment at bookshark.com/podcast. We'd love to feature your reflection on a future episode.

EPISODE 140 SEASON 4 | It used to be that news only came from a few vetted sources, the news on radio or tv and the printed paper. With the advance of technology, the news is literally at our fingertips coming from the world over and from countless sources. It's also given rise to people only getting ‘certain' news based upon what they've clicked before and those ever-present algorithms. Join Janna and Nate from the Nomadic Professor, as they discuss media literacy, something becoming more crucial to us as we teach and empower our children to become aware of the world around them. ABOUT OUR GUEST | In college, Nate Noorlander double-majored in philosophy and history teaching. After a stint as a project manager with a disaster repair company, he moved to Beijing, China, where he taught IGCSE and A Level history at the Cambridge International Curriculum Center of Beijing Normal University. He also spent time touring in India and trekking in Nepal. Worn out by the Beijing air, Nate moved home with his family and taught English and history at Mountainville Academy, and then the American International School of Utah. At AISU he developed mini-courses in boredom and awareness (probably close to what many people call mindfulness) based on Heidegger's ideas about technology, and Nicholas Carr's ideas about what the internet does to our brains, areas of study that (perhaps ironically) he finds compelling. Done in this time by life in the beautiful mountain west he returned to Beijing, where he taught IB History, IB English, and Theory of Knowledge at the Yew Chung International School of Beijing. When Covid-19 hit he was coaching the boys' basketball team and gearing up for an end-of-season tournament in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, ignorant of what was coming. The trip was canceled, his family just made it out of Beijing on a flight three times its usual cost, and he stuck it out in the shuttered city for another six weeks. When life didn't change, he left too. Since then it's been all history with The Nomadic Professor. LISTENER COUPON CODE ★Request your coupon code to use on any purchase at bookshark.com. QUOTABLES Nate:  So all of our content, whether it's American history, or something else features the professor on location, all over the world. Janna: All right, so fun fact the Nomadic Professor himself is a homeschool dad, correct?  Nate: Yeah, that's part of the ideas sort of, we're in a time where technology and the structure of our educational options allow us to kind of break out of the brick-and-mortar classroom. Janna: And so we've talked just personally about how to make sure that our children who are being homeschooled are able to navigate well Nate: You also brought attention to the way media acts as a filter for what you hear and what you don't hear. So that's a unique phenomenon in and of itself, because what feels urgent, what feels critical, what feels like it's worth your attention in a given moment, what stories have gained traction, as opposed to, you know, and gain traction for reasons that are not always related to their significance or their importance Janna: The bottom line is dollars in so like you had said, Well, of course, this story that I was talking about, why is that going to get dollars maybe in their algorithms that bring sadness to our world. Nate: There are honest actors who are just trying to survive and not deceive people, but they need their businesses to stay afloat. And so they can't just operate on purely altruistic impulses. Thanks to show sponsor BookShark. Request a homeschool curriculum catalog or download samples at bookshark.com. If you'd like to share an aha moment, an inspirational quote, a homeschool hack, a book you're loving, or a suggested podcast topic/guest, leave a comment at bookshark.com/podcast. We'd love to feature your reflection on a future episode.

In college Nate Noorlander double-majored in philosophy and history teaching. After a stint as a project manager with a disaster repair company, he moved to Beijing, China, where he taught IGCSE and A Level history at the Cambridge International Curriculum Center of Beijing Normal University. He also spent time touring in India and trekking in Nepal. Worn out by the Beijing air, Nate moved home with his family and taught English and history at Mountainville Academy, and then the American International School of Utah. At AISU he developed mini-courses in boredom and awareness (probably close to what many people call mindfulness) based around Heidegger's ideas about technology, and Nicholas Carr's ideas about what the internet does to our brains, areas of study that (perhaps ironically) he finds compelling. Worn out this time by life in the beautiful mountain west he returned to Beijing, where he taught IB history, IB English, and Theory of Knowledge at the Yew Chung International School of Beijing. When Covid-19 hit he was coaching the boys basketball team and gearing up for an end-of-season tournament in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, ignorant of what was coming.    The trip was canceled, his family just made it out of Beijing on a flight three times its usual cost, and he stuck it out in the shuttered city for another six weeks. When life didn't change, he left too. Since then it's been all history with The Nomadic Professor.     Thank you for listening to the A+ Parents podcast. If you love the show, don't forget to subscribe, share and leave us a review. Also, follow us online at www.aplusparents.com  www.mrdmath.com or on our social channels @MrDMathlive @aplusparentspodcast   Also, host Dennis DiNoia has a new book out NOW called “Teach: Becoming Independently Responsible Learners. Order your copy: https://aplusparents.com/teach   OR on Amazon   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X2B3MG8/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_i_DDH16A3BD5X79CSFSQXB   To learn more about Mr.D Math Live Homeschool classes, visit:   https://mrdmath.edu20.org/visitor_class_catalog?affiliate=10252228

Doodling – it is just something people do, particularly when listening to a boring speaker. While people often think of it as a distraction, doodling can actually help your memory. Listen as I begin this episode by explaining how that works. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090226210039.htm The Internet is messing with your mind according to Nicholas Carr. He took a close look at the research on this for his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (https://amzn.to/2VasqO6) ( by the way, his work on this made him a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). Listen as Nicholas makes the case that always being connected and available online takes a toll. Sure the Internet makes life convenient and offers other conveniences, there is a price we all pay that you may not realize. Being a bit weird may actually be one of your greatest strengths. In fact, your weirdness can propel your personal and professional success according to Chris Williamson who gave a TED Talk on Embracing Your Weirdness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Murw1YnFfiw&t=205s). He joins me to explain just how unique you really are and what you can do for yourself and the world by expressing it. Chris is also the host of the podcast Modern Wisdom (https://apple.co/2MNqIgw) Everyone's life is full of problems. While you may not know what problems lie ahead, you can be sure they are there waiting out there somewhere. Listen to hear some interesting advice that will help you better handle those troubles and crises when they do show up. And they will show up. Source: Brain Tracy author of Crunch Point (https://amzn.to/3zJaGs0) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Indeed is the hiring platform where you can Attract, Interview, and Hire all in one place! Start hiring NOW with a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING Offer good for a limited time. Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you've earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match U.S. Cellular knows how important your kid's relationship with technology is, so they've made it their mission to help them establish good digital habits early on! That's why they've partnered with Screen Sanity, a non-profit dedicated to helping kids navigate the digital landscape. For a smarter start to the school year, U.S. Cellular is offering a free basic phone on new eligible lines, providing an alternative to a smartphone for children. Visit https://USCellular.com/BuiltForUS ! We really like the Freakonomics Radio podcast! Check it out at https://freakonomics.com/podcasts OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The internet and social media were supposed to democratise knowledge and unite the world. Things didn't quite turn out that way. Read by Leighton Pugh. Image: Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook. Credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy Stock Photo

What is the internet doing to our brains? Lol Wretched Radio | Air Date: June 27, 2023 https://media-wretched.org/Radio/Podcast/WR2023-0627.mp3 Segment 1 Let’s talk about your brain. Do you find it challenging to listen to longer sermons or reading a chapter of a book? Could it be connected to social media? The Shallows by Nicholas Carr – […] The post YOUR BRAIN IS BEING RE-WIRED appeared first on Wretched.

In this episode of High Theory, Dennis Duncan tells us about the history of the index. At it's simplest, an index is a table with columns that allow you to match sets of terms, most often topics and page numbers. Google is an index, as was the first bible concordance, completed in 1230 under the direction of a French Dominican scholar named Hugo de Saint-Cher. In the episode, Dennis quotes a line from Alexander Pope's Dunciad: How index-learning turns no student pale.  Yet holds the eel of science by the tail (book 1, lines 279-80) He also references Nicholas Carr's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic, July/Aug 2008), and the book based upon it, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2011), both of which make an argument against shallow reading that Dennis argues goes all the way back to medieval critiques of the index. In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler. Dennis Duncan is a scholar of book history, translation, and avant-garde literature at the University College London. His book about the history of the index, Index: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age was published in the US by Norton in 2022. The book includes two indices, once made by indexing software, and the other by Paula Clarke Bain. This week's image is a portrait of Hugo de Saint-Cher, made by Tommaso da Modena. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Full citation: Hugues de Saint-Cher († 1263), bibliste et théologien, Paris, Centre d'études du Saulchoir, Actes du colloque 13-15 mars 2000, Brepols, coll. « Bibliothèque d'histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge », n°1, Turnhout, 2004, 524 p., ISBN : 2-503-51721-8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of High Theory, Dennis Duncan tells us about the history of the index. At it's simplest, an index is a table with columns that allow you to match sets of terms, most often topics and page numbers. Google is an index, as was the first bible concordance, completed in 1230 under the direction of a French Dominican scholar named Hugo de Saint-Cher. In the episode, Dennis quotes a line from Alexander Pope's Dunciad: How index-learning turns no student pale.  Yet holds the eel of science by the tail (book 1, lines 279-80) He also references Nicholas Carr's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic, July/Aug 2008), and the book based upon it, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2011), both of which make an argument against shallow reading that Dennis argues goes all the way back to medieval critiques of the index. In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler. Dennis Duncan is a scholar of book history, translation, and avant-garde literature at the University College London. His book about the history of the index, Index: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age was published in the US by Norton in 2022. The book includes two indices, once made by indexing software, and the other by Paula Clarke Bain. This week's image is a portrait of Hugo de Saint-Cher, made by Tommaso da Modena. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Full citation: Hugues de Saint-Cher († 1263), bibliste et théologien, Paris, Centre d'études du Saulchoir, Actes du colloque 13-15 mars 2000, Brepols, coll. « Bibliothèque d'histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge », n°1, Turnhout, 2004, 524 p., ISBN : 2-503-51721-8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In this episode of High Theory, Dennis Duncan tells us about the history of the index. At it's simplest, an index is a table with columns that allow you to match sets of terms, most often topics and page numbers. Google is an index, as was the first bible concordance, completed in 1230 under the direction of a French Dominican scholar named Hugo de Saint-Cher. In the episode, Dennis quotes a line from Alexander Pope's Dunciad: How index-learning turns no student pale.  Yet holds the eel of science by the tail (book 1, lines 279-80) He also references Nicholas Carr's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic, July/Aug 2008), and the book based upon it, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2011), both of which make an argument against shallow reading that Dennis argues goes all the way back to medieval critiques of the index. In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler. Dennis Duncan is a scholar of book history, translation, and avant-garde literature at the University College London. His book about the history of the index, Index: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age was published in the US by Norton in 2022. The book includes two indices, once made by indexing software, and the other by Paula Clarke Bain. This week's image is a portrait of Hugo de Saint-Cher, made by Tommaso da Modena. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Full citation: Hugues de Saint-Cher († 1263), bibliste et théologien, Paris, Centre d'études du Saulchoir, Actes du colloque 13-15 mars 2000, Brepols, coll. « Bibliothèque d'histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge », n°1, Turnhout, 2004, 524 p., ISBN : 2-503-51721-8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of High Theory, Dennis Duncan tells us about the history of the index. At it's simplest, an index is a table with columns that allow you to match sets of terms, most often topics and page numbers. Google is an index, as was the first bible concordance, completed in 1230 under the direction of a French Dominican scholar named Hugo de Saint-Cher. In the episode, Dennis quotes a line from Alexander Pope's Dunciad: How index-learning turns no student pale.  Yet holds the eel of science by the tail (book 1, lines 279-80) He also references Nicholas Carr's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic, July/Aug 2008), and the book based upon it, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2011), both of which make an argument against shallow reading that Dennis argues goes all the way back to medieval critiques of the index. In the longer version of our conversation, we talked about Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night a Traveler. Dennis Duncan is a scholar of book history, translation, and avant-garde literature at the University College London. His book about the history of the index, Index: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age was published in the US by Norton in 2022. The book includes two indices, once made by indexing software, and the other by Paula Clarke Bain. This week's image is a portrait of Hugo de Saint-Cher, made by Tommaso da Modena. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. Full citation: Hugues de Saint-Cher († 1263), bibliste et théologien, Paris, Centre d'études du Saulchoir, Actes du colloque 13-15 mars 2000, Brepols, coll. « Bibliothèque d'histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge », n°1, Turnhout, 2004, 524 p., ISBN : 2-503-51721-8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sean Illing talks with Michael Sacasas, an author and teacher exploring the relationship between technology and society in his newsletter, The Convivial Society. This conversation is all about attention: what it exactly is, what its purpose is, and how it is under threat by the technology of modern society and its ubiquitous distractions. Michael calls upon venerated philosophers (like Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch) as well as contemporary writers (like Nicholas Carr and Jenny Odell) to make the case that figuring out how to command our attention is a matter of great moral significance, and is a crucial component of living a good life. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: L. Michael Sacasas (@LMSacasas), author of the newsletter The Convivial Society on Substack; associate director, Christian Study Center of Gainesville References:  The Frailest Thing: Ten Years of Thinking About the Meaning of Technology by L.M. Sacasas (Gumroad; 2019) "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut (1961) "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic; July/August 2008) Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan (1964) Blaise Pascal on Diversion, from the Pensées (1670) "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" by Simone Weil (1942) "The idea of perfection" by Iris Murdoch (1964) "Against Dryness" by Iris Murdoch (1961) Simone Weil, letter to Joë Bousquet, Apr. 13, 1942: "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." "On Two Ways of Relating to the World" by L.M. Sacasas (The Convivial Society, Nov. 22) How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell (Melville House; 2019)   Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Senior Producer: Katelyn Bogucki Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Katherine Brodsky is today a freelance writer who in the early 2000's was the founder and editor-in-chief of an online culture magazine that was registering 600,000 pageviews a month while herself still an undergrad. In this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib explores a life lived online, from the dot-com bubble to the social media era. Brodsky, whose Substack is Random Minds, is an observer of culture from a peripatetic vantage point, a Canadian working in the American film industry, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants watching her parents' homeland ravaged by war, and a public relations professional who moonlights as a commentator and photographer. Though an early adopter of internet technology who became a “content creator” before that was even the phrase, Brodsky over the last few years has been hitting the shoals of social media culture as her classical free speech-oriented liberalism and journalistic devotion to a bare modicum of objectivity run up against the realities of 2020's “moral clarity” where strident viewpoints are prized. Razib and Brodsky agree that Nicholas Carr's 2010 book The Shallows already has the character of a Cassandra-like prophecy, as the internet has become a tool not for mental liberation but for enslavement to impulse and the mob. Brodsky outlines her polestar when observing and commenting on the culture, which emphasizes a level of detachment or sympathy for the “other” that is sorely lacking in much of mainstream 2020's discourse.

Is your business operating at its full potential? Pete Gibson, the former CIO of Friendly's and Johnny Rocket's restaurants has built a reputation going from company to company improving overall functionality and increasing revenue. Learn how he uses technology and team-building strategies to maximize IT output and why his nearly 15-year military background has proven useful in his professional career.Tune in to learn:Pete's military background (2:40)Some case studies from Pete's private sector experience (11:50)Pete's approach to a company audit (18:05)Peter's take on today's IT environment (34:00)Mentions:“The First 90 Days” by Michael D. Watkins“Does IT Matter?” by Nicholas CarrUp Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Learn more at http://www.salesforce.com/commerce Mission.org is a media studio producing content for world-class clients. Learn more at http://www.mission.org.