Episode transcription

(Be aware this transcription was done by AI and might contain some mistakes)

Anne Trager (00:00)
Hi, and welcome to the Human Pulse Podcast where we are talking about living well with technology. I'm Anne Trager, a human potential coach.

Fabrice Neuman (00:10)
And I'm Fabrice Neuman. Human pulse is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

Anne Trager (00:16)
So today I wanted to talk about why we're doing this podcast, what does living well mean, and what it really makes us human. Sounds like a lot to do in 30 minutes, but let's see what we can do. Okay?

Fabrice Neuman (00:29)
Okay.

Anne Trager (00:29)
So, Fabrice, why are you doing this podcast?

Fabrice Neuman (00:34)
Well, basically for me and I think for us, it's a way to continue the conversations we already have about the transformations all tech and all tech products and software and what have you are about. We do have those conversations all the time about—even just a new product and what does it mean to use it and what changes it can give or offer and sometimes the danger of it or what does it all mean? So obviously we talk a lot about AI these days, but there are many, many…and as we'll discuss during this episode and also other episodes, AI is a big bag of things and it depends on what product, what intentions are behind the product and stuff like that. this is why we want to this podcast to talk about these things that we care about so much.

Anne Trager (01:35)
And promise me it's not only going to be about AI because we've been having these conversations since forever. I mean, I remember when you stood in line to get the very first iPhones that came out in France. Okay. And how did that change our life? I told you how it would change our lives. Fabrice and I are married and I told him that if he did not come back with two of them, I would change the locks on the door. And so you see it had severe impacts. It could have had severe impacts on our life. Okay.

Fabrice Neuman (01:39)
Okay.

Heh.

Anne Trager (02:05)
He brought two back. It was fine.

Fabrice Neuman (02:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. For those who thought, yikes, that I brought two back and so we were fine.

Anne Trager (02:10)
hahahaha

But I agree with you, things, it's a very intense time right now for humans and technology. And there are a lot of questions and we both thought it was a good time to bring these discussions that we're having out into the open and see if we can broaden the conversation to other people. My quest is to really understand this human thing, you know, what makes us humans. I think that all of these tools are really, really good mirrors for us to understand how we can be more human.

Fabrice Neuman (02:49)
Well, Well, and we'll see. It's sometimes, yeah, well, AI and other things, you know, I'm reminded of a CGP Grey video from 10 years ago. So we'll put that in the show notes. The video is called Human Need Not Apply or Humans Need Not Apply.

CGP Grey does explainer videos on YouTube for a long time, has been doing that for a long time. And 10 years ago, he explored that theme of the things we are creating to replace us in certain ways or to help us in certain ways. But what would it mean for the future? And some of the things he talked about in that video are incredibly insightful.

So that's the kind of things we want to talk about and because we more often than not philosophize upon those things and we go deep and so it's for me it's very interesting to try and share this conversation and hopefully we'll have some feedback about it. And if I may also add, there's something else for me which is bringing the good out of technology.

Anne Trager (03:46)
Hmm

Fabrice Neuman (04:04)
It's not only about, it's going to change for the worst or it's going to replace us or some people will be left out because technology goes so fast. It's also a way for me to remind everyone that there are so many good sides in technology that improved and that will improve our lives. And so I will try my best to to talk about that as well.

Anne Trager (04:35)
Well, we did add to the title of this podcast, Living Well with Technology. So there's this notion of living well, and maybe we should talk a little bit about what that means. What does living well mean for you?

Fabrice Neuman (04:48)
Well, I wanted you to be the first to answer the question, actually. What does it to live well? There are so many aspects to this question. The thing is, first of all, guess it's trying to do what you like, what you love. So for me, doing a podcast, for example, it's something somewhat new for me. I've been doing a podcast,
a French one, so a French speaking one. So for the listeners out there, if you speak French, you can listen to that. You can search for it. But the thing is, I discovered that I like to do that, for example. And so I've been working in tech for how many years now? 30 years. And mostly as a writer. And I wrote many books, you know, tech help books, many articles for paper publications and web publications and stuff like that. And talking into a microphone was a discovery for me. And I was thinking that maybe another time I would have loved doing some radio, for example. So trying to find what you love doing is one way to live well. What is it for you?

Anne Trager (05:58)
So there's a story I tell about a dream that I had in my early twenties. Okay. My dreams are always very clear. And so I, in this dream, it was a lunch break and I was having lunch with the director. Okay. It was like a movie scene. Okay. So it's not every day you get to have lunch with the director. Okay. And I...

The director, I don't know, it wasn't gendered, okay, the director handed me a choice of menus. And the first was the low fat menu. The second one was the tasting menu. And the third was immediate illumination. I woke up and I kicked myself because I did not choose immediate illumination. I mean, I could have just been done with it. could have Nirvana directly, but I did not. Okay. And I did not choose the low fat menu. I chose the tasting menu. And that's for me living well. It's taking this life that we have and getting as much as we can out of it, doing as much as we can, like the good and experiencing the full spectrum of what we can experience.

That's what living well means to me. I don't really know what else to say after having said that.

Fabrice Neuman (07:19)
Well, okay. I guess the one thing I would like to add to that is just for people listening out there, you can tell us what it means for you to live well. And it doesn't have to be related to technology. It's just what does it mean for you? It's mostly related to tech for me because I've been living in tech for so long. I my story goes as like when I was 12 years old, I started to write how-to guides for my mother. At the time, it was to how to use a VCR, right? So I started to write a little step -by -step guide with little drawings. You can tap this button, stuff like that. this is, know, tech and explaining to people and making them comfortable with technology. This is what I've been doing all my life, basically. being able to do that for a living for me is obviously a big part of living well. And there are other parts of living well, I think we'll talk about during all the next episodes of this podcast. Hopefully we'll be able to do many of them and we'll probably explore…Not probably. This is what we'll do. We'll explore many aspects of living well, whether they're related to tech or not.

Anne Trager (08:47)
I think for me, there's also this notion of, continually growing, like in one way or another, exploring more, learning more, ultimately trying to be a better person. That's part of my quest. Okay. It's not everybody's quest, but it's part of my quest. And, and all of that is that, is that closing the gap that is part of living well for me.

Fabrice Neuman (09:15)
Okay, so I guess we'll explore that more and more as we go deeper in our conversations and longer, not longer than 30 minutes, we said that, but in other episodes.

Anne Trager (09:23)
So what about today's main question, which is what makes us human? Now, I know perfectly well that we will probably be answering this question for the duration of this podcast. I mean, for every episode, because it is such a huge question. And it's not a simple question at that. I read an article recently in a magazine called The New Scientist that talks about how paleoanthropologists have trouble defining what human, I mean, when we became human.

So even scientists don't know when we stopped being chimps or apes rather. And I thought that's, it's really interesting. We talk a lot about it. We talk about artificial intelligence. So therefore we talk about, what is this human intelligence and, and what does it mean to be human. And in this article, I just thought I'd start us off there with this idea that maybe it's not so clear what being human is. And the article ends with, “evolution is a continuous process. And the propensity to divide life up into conspicuously distinct species and genera is less a reflection of fact than another human idiosyncrasy.”
So even when we shifted from being australopithecus afarensis to homo sapiens, that's just a human thing. It's a human way for us to describe who we are. And so here we are in another time and age and doing the same thing.

Fabrice Neuman (11:19)
Yeah, well, it's like the evolution is so important. And I guess you could say evolution is in so many aspects on so many sides. The human being evolves, but also the way we relate to each other, the way we relate to tools we create.

Once again, it's not that I want to talk only about AI, but AI is this new tool on the block, and that we all talk about because some people talk about it not only as a tool, but as something that's changing the way we are and who we are more profoundly than any other tool before. That's the key to our reflection, which is to say,
“How do we evolve to accept all those new tools? Do we want to accept all those new tools? What do they do to us as new tools?” We center around tech because tech is changing so rapidly. And we know that socially we don't change as rapidly. For example, I also do training for seniors.

And they are all so willing to learn. some of them, I mean, you know, they have more time to try and teach themselves. And so they look for people like me, for example, to explain things to them and make them more comfortable with technology. That's OK. They have time for that. But they're, think, a reflection of what the society is today, which is as soon as they learn something new, 10 new things have appeared. And so I often have this conversation with them when they tell me, “but it's going so fast, we will never catch up.” And one way I try to answer them is that you don't need to catch up. You don't need to know everything. You need to, or... You don't need to do anything, but if you want to do something, then let's go. You can choose your own pace, your own rhythm. That's fine. The idea for you first is to be comfortable with what you know how to do and try to reach a little further one step at a time. And even if it means that that we they don't go as far as they thought they would to begin with, it doesn't matter that.

Anne Trager (13:33)
So if we get back to the question of what does it mean to be human? There’s…and we link it into AI, which is what you're talking about. one of the topics that you've mentioned is, you had mentioned earlier. A topic about, memory. Okay. And AI, mean, so let's just choose a topic. Does memory make us human? Okay. And so would then having a perfect memory change how we're human?

Fabrice Neuman (14:37)
Yeah, that's the topic that really struck me lately. So let's recap a bit because there are a few things and a few tools that were about to appear or are appearing in that regard. So a few months back, Microsoft tried to introduce a new feature called Recall. Recall is a feature that will be embedded into Windows.

Recall will record everything on your screen every few seconds, literally taking a screenshot of what you do. And then every screenshot will be analyzed by an AI on the device. Normally it's local, so it's going to be analyzed locally. So it can see what was on the screen at that point. And then you will be able to search very freely, like whether you were doing a PowerPoint presentation, reading an email, reading a website, whatever. And then you'll be able to ask the system. So I'm looking for that slide on that presentation where I was talking about banana or whatever. It was probably a couple of weeks ago. And maybe I was listening to that kind of music during that.

So this is really the kind of fuzzy questions that we can ask another human being who can make up some relations between different things that are not literally connected to each other. Well, so there was a problem with that particular feature because Microsoft is not very good in security. And so some people were very quick to single out some security problems.

The idea remains, notably so because there was another company called Limitless. It's called Limitless today. Their website is limitless.ai. All the things we are talking about in this podcast will be in the show notes, so don't worry. You'll be able to go there and click on links.

And they had a Mac app called Rewind that a year before Microsoft announced anything about Recall, which was basically doing the same thing, recording everything you do on your Mac at that point. So you could ask natural questions to find anything. I mean, we all have had this experience where we know we have this file somewhere. We know we... did something on the computer and we don't remember where it is, what exactly it was, what form it was. Was it in an email, in a chat, on a website? But we would like to find it. And with today's tools, we can't do that. So this is where those AI tools come in. They want to answer that question.
The same company, Limitless, came up, although so another thing called a pendant. So you have that around your neck and it records everything you do. I don't think it has a camera, but it has a microphone. So it will record what you say. It will record conversations you have with people, which is already questionable, legally speaking. But the idea is...

There was a very interesting interview of one of the co-founder of Limitless. This guy is called Dan Siroker S -I -R -O -K -E -R. for him, this pendant, this tool is the same thing as having a pair of glasses for the memory. So I think we all agree with the fact that we don't all have perfect vision.

Almost, I guess I could say most of human beings don't have a perfect vision. So we need glasses and we find it very natural to have glasses. So OK, and it's a betterment of our lives, right? It makes us better or at least it makes our life easier. But then the question is, is it the same thing for the memory? Because and this is what you were mentioning to start with, Anne.

Is having a perfect memory a good way to be human? Because one of the things we do with our memory is that we forget things. And so how would you consider these tools trying to give us the perfect memory this guy is looking for?

Anne Trager (19:22)
Well, so I think there's something really compelling about the idea. mean, and having constant access to everything when we need it immediately is really, really, truly very compelling and could in many ways improve our lives. Okay. I can see how useful it is. And at the same time, I truly believe that forgetting is a superpower.

I think that forgetting, I mean, I really don't want to remember everything. And human beings are terrible at remembering things. Okay. And, and so I'm thinking that, well, so if we forget things, it must serve some sort of purpose.

The question I'm asking is how can we take advantage of forgetting things? And I'm all for having the tools. The tools can remember for me if I need to remember, but I personally really truly don't want to remember everything. Okay. and in order for that to be a tool, I have to be aware as well of the forgetfulness. That this is something we do. We forget. Okay. I don't necessarily think we need to fix it.

You know, why would we need to remember everything? Why does it matter so much? You know, we're always reformulating stories about our experiences. This is what we do as humans. We tell stories. Our memories serve to tell a story so that we can understand what is happening in our experience. This is how we create the world, okay, around us, our own personal world. So...

If AI is remembering everything, then how will we be creating our own personal worlds? That's the question that comes for me. It comes up for me. For me, it's not so much about what do I remember from the past, okay? And it's not even so much about what I'm going to create in the future, but rather about the experience that I'm having here and now. It's about the time in space where we are.

So again, it's a different level. I don't know what AI does with that. Okay. And yes, there are times when it's very useful to know, you know, what was that email I wrote while I was listening to that music and, to that particular person about that particular project. I do not deny that in any other way. However, if we go to this deeper level question.

Fabrice Neuman (21:38)
Yeah, I think it's interesting what you're saying about the memory thing, which is so you experience it not only with your brain, but with all the other senses. And this is one of the things that AI doesn't do well today, which is to encompass all of our, you know, the sight, the hearing, taste, for example, we have memories linked to our taste, which are very powerful.

So, I think there's the quest for trying to help us in any way possible. And having a perfect memory can be also a curse. There's a video I watched recently, on YouTube. It's called Meet a Canadian Teen Gifted with a Superpowered Memory. And so it's about a young woman with a something called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory or H -SAM. And she can rewind, as we were saying for the tool name, everything, to whenever, with dates, with a perfect remembering of names and stuff like that. Which means that she can remember everything, whatever the things that she remembers are good or bad. So it also means that she cannot forget anything that was terribly sad for her, for example. And so one of the sentences I remember from that is that she said she only has forgiveness instead of forgetfulness. And so this is where having a perfect memory can be probably dangerous or very hard to live with.

Anne Trager (23:17)
I hear what you're saying. And I think that, I think that you're, that having a perfect memory would be a true curse because you couldn't forget the bad stuff. And then I think part of forgetting, I mean, part of this life is experiencing both the good and the bad, you know, as we can, and then moving on to the next thing, it is always changing.

I used a particular verb there. said experience. I don't think that, at least in my perspective, I'm not here to remember things, but rather to experience them. And then maybe I'll remember them. And maybe I won't. Okay. You know, but ultimately it's not so much about remembering the world as it is about making sense of the world and experiencing.

I'd like to just throw in one thing that from, you know, the father, the grandfather or godfather of the art of flow and his name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. His name is really hard to pronounce and I probably just butchered it. But he wrote, “The self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.”

And he says that because to get into this state of flow, which is his specialty, which he studied greatly. And it's a state where you no longer feel time, and you're really highly productive. Some people feel it in sports. Some people feel it when they're working, when they're at just the right level of challenge. It requires letting go. the science shows that there are parts of the brain that really have to let go. We have to let go to be able to access that state.

So that's my take on forgetting and memory.

Fabrice Neuman (25:14)
That said, think we still want, we are all in search of a better memory for something. So you do have some practical advice to get a better memory. So would you share that?

Anne Trager (25:31)
Yeah. So memory, requires, first of all, attention. Okay. You have to actually pay attention in order to remember something. I know that sounds obvious, but actually a lot of us are not paying attention anymore. And I include myself totally in that “us” category. Okay.

Second, you have to organize the information, which is when we call upon previous memories to sort of figure out what it is. Okay. And then thirdly, you have to understand the information. And lastly, you need to relate it to something else that your brain already knows. Okay. Those are the steps that we take to remember things.

So first, pay attention. Second, organize the information. You don't have to think about this because you do it naturally. Okay. Then...understand the information and then relate it to something your brain already knows.

What does that mean? Practically speaking is that if you want to remember something, you can do those steps consciously. So I remember very clearly practicing memory, remembering people's names. I, I'm notoriously don't ever really pay attention. So it's very hard for me to remember people's names, but I said, I can learn this. Okay. So.I…

I remember then the very first person I tried it on, I did this. I said, I'm going to remember her name. So I paid attention when she told me her name, I repeated the name and I said, that's a, that's, that's a fine name. Okay. And then I made a picture in my, in, in my head, I can still see it. Okay. She, she had this long curly hair like this and her name was Justine.

And so I said, I had to connect it to something, had to organize the information. So I connected it to something I knew, which is the balances of justice. Okay. So I can see this and I overlaid it onto her hair. Okay. And, and justice, Justine sounds about the same. And so I made those connections in my mind. took me all of, you know, two and a half seconds. And I will always remember what she looks like and what her name is, okay? And even when she cut her hair, it still worked. So, but that's the technique is to make those connections. And then if you connect it to an emotion, you're going to remember it even better because that's the way we function is with emotion.

Fabrice Neuman (27:55)
Well, that's amazing. so I'll try that too. On that note, think, well, that's all, folks. I hope you enjoyed our first episode, and we'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Anne Trager (28:06)
Bye everybody.