Digital Optimist

This episode carries on the thinking for what the endgame might look like for technology and organizations. There are seeds already planted that will certainly grow over the next 100 years and may look familiar but blossom in was we never expected. For example, what really will the impacts of AI be on organizations over the long run. Many of the ideas Scott delivers in this pod will be hotly debat...

This podcast kicks off the next series about the Endgame of Digital Transformation. The next four podcasts will postulate what the future may look like when technology is “done” transforming four areas of our world. This podcast kicks off the predications with the impacts of technology on society in general. While no one, not even Scott, can predict the future with 100% accuracy, even being able t...

There are many CEO’s and CIO’s who cringe the moment someone says the phrase “digital transformation.” Unfortunately, the concept was hijacked by consultants and advisors for a decade and became way overused before an appropriate definition could really get into the dictionary. It became a term synonymous with digitizing business processes. It is a perfect time to redo the common definition and br...

Maybe one of the more important podcasts in this series, the topic of Digital Wellbeing. A growing problem in the world is our many hours spent interfacing with digital tools, whether at work, or in our personal lives, and many time both. Scott provides an analogy between healthy eating and healthy digital being that you might find interesting!

This is one of Scott’s favorite topics! He has been studying and talking about transhumanism for over a decade and it is time to take this concept more mainstream so we can prepare for the outcome. Our technology tools are becoming more powerful each year and with the advent of powerful robotics and AI, we will soon (historically speaking) have the ability to power our lives and capabilities far p...

This is one of Scott’s favorite topics! He has been studying and talking about transhumanism for over a decade and it is time to take this concept more mainstream so we can prepare for the outcome. Our technology tools are becoming more powerful each year and with the advent of powerful robotics and AI, we will soon (historically speaking) have the ability to power our lives and capabilities far p...

Scott starts a new series that is all about finding better definitions for important words we use in the technology field. Too many times words are used that many people really do not understand. In other cases, the words we use are not good at really describing the concepts behind the words. In this first podcast of the series, Scott takes on artificial Intelligence and dramatically expands the w...

This is an interstitial podcast between two series. There is so much talk about whether AI is good or bad and those words do not do justice to the complexity of that debate. Scott looks at one important aspect by thinking through whether we might become negatively addicted to the use of AI or will AI free us from mundane tasks and free our creative capabilities – or both! The more accurately we ca...

Like the story of the fish that do not have a sense that they live in the water because it always all around them, humanity is being impacted by the amplification of technology. For those of us living right in the middle of it, we have a sense that our lives are changing, but we don’t really have the comparative scale to understand how much or how fast. People who have lived for many decades can r...

Like the story of the fish that do not have a sense that they live in the water because it always all around them, humanity is being impacted by the amplification of technology. For those of us living right in the middle of it, we have a sense that our lives are changing, but we don’t really have the comparative scale to understand how much or how fast. People who have lived for many decades can r...

There are two central ways humans will amplify themselves. This podcast deals with the first which is physically improving our capabilities. We were all born with natural bodies. Some of these bodies had weaknesses from birth. Some of our bodies get damaged along the way. What happens when we can repair either of these states and create physical parity in the world? What happens when we can extend...

Human beings are always looking for an edge or improvement. In a lot of ways, we are achievement junkies who never stop figuring out how to amplify our capabilities. A competitive world drives us from childhood to find ways to be better than those around us. It is no surprise that technologies are becoming a more powerful influence in getting us the advantages we seek. In this opening podcast of t...

What is the human mind in relationship to our brain? What is a machine mind going to look like? How do humans decide on their next best word or action and how does an LLM do the same? At what point might we believe that a machine mind is waking up? In this episode, Scott dives into the philosophy of mind by asking you the listener a handful of intriguing questions. Along the way you might come to...

In the final podcast in the Digital Philosophy series, Scott examines whether technology will ultimately help or hurt the human race. This requires us to understand the recipe of digital interaction we each have and see what the ingredients are that make up our own recipe. To help with that Scott reviews an interesting list of negative impacts of technology, then the opposite side with the positiv...

What if we stopped using humanity as the high bar we seek when building AI’s and robots? A philosophy to explore is the need to let go of the belief that building AI’s “as smart as us” is the right path. The reason we fear AI’s harming us is because we harm each other, and we can only imagine that technology will do the same. We can have a new philosophy that says we should build technology to be...

Philosophy is thousands of years old and for all that time, it has been the study of finding truth in a world populated by humans as the only thinking entities. AI’s and synthetic intelligence are now changing the very definition of intelligences and consciousness. In this podcast Scott explores what he calls Neo-Philosophy and the need to answer important questions about the integration of human...

Why digital philosophy and not digital science? Because science struggles to answer some questions that have lots of humanity baked into them. Because the meaning of words sometimes fail us with being consistent across peoples and science struggles when the words don’t have solid measurable meanings. Such it is with happiness and the meaning of life. These words are a state of being or set of choi...

This podcast is an important concept that sets the foundation for the new series coming next – Digital Philosophy. Scott shares the concept that the generations alive today are struggling with a lack of context and story as to what we are trying to achieve as a country, or as a world. We have almost no agreement as to what the important outcome of our being alive together will mean. Without a comp...

Most everyone understands that a large amount of content on the Internet is not true. This is posted by people and organizations who have a specific reason to lie and mislead, or can be posted by people who simply state “facts” and make references to research that is simply not valid. We are not far from the ability to use AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning to begin scoring content as to the l...

Organizations are using more technology and data to measure job candidates and workers. This dynamic was kickstarted during the pandemic when workers were forced to work from home for an extended period of time and job interviews all became virtual. Now that we have moved back to a hybrid work environment, we have the gap between how workers feel about their productivity and what leaders are think...

In a world where data and analytics are being applied in new ways, we explore the evolving “Trust Score”. The foundations have been laid with people judging the ability to trust someone based on their online presence, credit score, work history, school grades, etc. Will a Trust Score help the world be a safer place where people work hard to have a good Trust Score, or will this kind of measurement...

Does everything need to be measured? The concept of technology driven quantification and measuring has far reaching impact and is not often discussed which makes it a perfect Digital Optimist topic. The capability for people, organizations, and products to be rated, to be quantified, to be measured, in very public ways is expanding. The door is now wide open as people have credit scores they never...

Adding machine intelligence to automation opens up a world of new possibilities. As we stand on the brink of replacing more parts of systems formerly done by humans, it is critical to examine the impacts on the world. This is the kind of podcast Scott loves to create and deliver!

Most people think of the office or their organization when they hear the topic of automation. However, there as much or more automation going on in our personal lives today. While automation at work helps organizations be more profitable and mechanize processes and systems, automation in our personal lives has very different impacts. In this podcast Scott paints a picture as to the current levels...

As a new wave of intelligent automation tools with levels get used in the workforce, we shift the Humalogy balance. Scott makes new observations as to the ideas and best practices people need to know in order to gain a tactical advantage with further automating the systems that drive organizations. In the larger picture, we are replacing large swaths of work formerly done by hand and the long term...