Episode transcription

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

Anne Trager (00:08)
Hi and welcome to the Human Pulse Podcast where we talk about living well with technology. I'm Anne Trager

Fabrice Neuman (00:16)
and I'm Fabrice Neuman.

Anne Trager (00:18)
We are recording this on September 21st, 2024.

Fabrice Neuman (00:22)
Human Pulse is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

Anne Trager (00:26)
So today I really wanted to talk about what living well with technology actually means for each of us. I mean, we do it differently. Okay. Take me and you. Day to day, we are clearly very, very different in how we deal with technology. We are both early adopters, that's for sure. But you're more of an explorer and I'm, well, let me tell you a story that illustrates what I am. Okay.

It's the vacuum incident. So we had a... Why are you laughing?

Fabrice Neuman (00:59)
Hm.

Well, because of course I know what you're going to say. But the thing is, it makes me laugh because it's a good example of how you deal or not deal with technology.

Anne Trager (01:12)

Okay, so we had one of those robot vacuums a really long time ago and then we didn't keep it for very long. I mean, when they first came out because we are early adopters.

Fabrice Neuman (01:26)
Yeah, well, so it was like 15 years ago or something. They were really dumb at that time.

Anne Trager (01:30)
Yeah, something like that. They were really dumb. Okay. At that time, right? So we get another one. And very recently, and you know, I was listening to you play around with it and clean the house with it. And I get all excited about it. And I thought, okay, wonderful. They're not as dumb anymore. This is fantastic. Okay. I remember going into the room after you did it the first time and saying, wow, this is great. Then you go away for a few days and I thought, neat, I am going to vacuum. So it's all clean when he comes home. So I set the vacuum up and I hit the button, you know, the various buttons you have to do. I had, I think I may have even called you because I couldn't quite remember which buttons I needed to click on my computer, whatever. Okay.

the interface I was using. So it starts and then I close the doors because it makes a little bit of noise and I went and I do my go about my day. And after about 15 minutes or so I say, it's a whole lot quieter than I thought it was. And continue going about my day. And I said, no, no, wait, something's wrong here. So I go and I open the doors and I go up the stairs and I, and I check out out and it's not working and I thought, what's going on? So I look at the device and it says, "I'm stuck. Please come help me". I thought, geez. So I look around for it and where is it stuck? In the most convenient place, of course, because that's what these robots do. We have a big, you know, king-size bed and it is right underneath the bed, further than I can possibly reach it. Okay. In the middle.

So I thought, okay, well, a few expletives come out and then I go and I crawl under the bed and I pull it out and I check it out and then I press the buttons and it starts whizzing around again and doing its thing and I close the doors and I go back downstairs and I do my thing and it goes quiet again. dear. So I go up and I start sending a little text message to Fabrice saying,

"This robot, what can you suggest?" And you know, he says, well, you might want to check out and make sure it's not getting stuck on anything or that there's not stuck, anything stuck inside of it. So I crawl under the bed again. And mind you, by this time my hair is all messed up and I've got dust all over me and all of this. And I crawl under the bed again. I pull it out. I check it out. There's nothing stuck in it. There's nothing on the floor. I make sure I...

clean, I pick up anything else that's on the floor. I almost pull out a, you know, a broom to sweep under the bed before I vacuum. Wait, wait, something's wrong here, right? So anyway, I press it and I go again. And third time it gets stuck. So the next text was full of expletives, as you may imagine, which I will not say here. I took the thing, I put it back on its dock and I pulled out the ordinary vacuum cleaner and I vacuumed. Okay. So.

As you can see, I'm an early adopter, but I'm also pretty impatient about it and I want it to work now. That is the kind of tech person I am. I want it to work and I want it to be easy. So I will never use that robot vacuum again. That's it.

Fabrice Neuman (05:04)
Yeah, well, so technology can be disappointing for sure. So you're the impatient one. I can be impatient too. The thing is, so I try new things so often that, I mean, you can hear me sometimes right?, Giving the expletive treatment to the computer because something doesn't work. And so I can relate to that.

Fabrice Neuman (05:35)
The thing is, it does happen for me because I'm working with computers, I've been doing that for so many years, but the thing is, I love to do that. So each time I kind of start finding an equilibrium and everything works. After let's say a few days, then I find it a bit...

I don't know, maybe, er, dull and so I have to try something new. So for example, and we'll talk about the tools we use and we're more in the Apple ecosystem for a few reasons that we're going to discuss. But I'm always trying new, for example, web browsers. I guess people don't do that. They use the one that's installed, and it's probably a good thing.

Fabrice Neuman (06:32)
But then, I try everything works together and then I try another one and I have to like reset everything. So, you know, it's the way I live with technology because this also, it's also my job I have.

Anne Trager (06:49)
Yeah, I know. I know you're an explorer. I get it. I get it. And yes, sometimes there's one connected lock on the door and I come home and there's another connected lock on the door. Okay.

Fabrice Neuman (07:03)
That I do, I test many things and then you're right. And we have to go through the whole rigmarole of adding your fingerprints, for example, on the door. And I have to tell you, so there's a new code on the door to open it. Okay, okay, I agree, I do that.

Anne Trager (07:20)
And so on. You do that. You do that. Well, so I'm guessing that we are all different. I mean, we being, you know, all of humanity, we all have different ways of dealing with technology and how we integrate it into our day to day. Do you have, have you noticed any specific types in the people you work with?

Fabrice Neuman (07:42)
Yeah, in the course of my job, so I do training, I accompany small companies to for their tech needs and stuff like that. You asked me the question, so I thought about three basic categories. There are the forgetful ones. The people I talk to and I have to repeat two, five, ten times things about just simple things, how to for example, add a picture to a text message or something and they will forget every time so I will have to tell them again. There are the people who are more like, "I'm not listening anyway". So really it's almost the same category as the forgetful ones, but at least with them it's clear that when I explain things to them, they don't care. Okay. And thankfully, and I love those people as well. Well, okay, I love everyone, but...

Anne Trager (08:25)
Hahaha
Yeah

Fabrice Neuman (08:43)
They are the "I'm interested, so tell me more please", ones. And so with those people, I can go further in actually helping them with technology so they can live better with it, which is interesting.

Anne Trager (08:59)
I would love to hear from our listeners a little bit more about what kind of interaction they have with tech and what kind of type of tech person they are. That would be really fun.

Fabrice Neuman (09:12)
Yeah, true. then, so, so let's, we thought we could discuss about how we live with technology, hopefully well, it will obviously depend on what everybody does with technology. But so what are you doing to live with technology and what are your rules?

Anne Trager (09:31)
So I, yeah, I do have rules. I mean, I like to set up my, my, my, my rules to, get along in life the way that I want to get along in life. And I have them with tech. Okay. One of the things that's really important to me, and it always has been, is to get as to the extent that it is possible for me, top of the line tools. with tech, it's really, you know, important. I mean, admittedly, when you're buying wine, for example, in France where we live, you can find really fine wines for a lower price if you know who to buy them from, right? And with tech, I don't have that kind of knowledge or patience as we've seen to actually find the lower price things that don't work or that do work rather. so, right. So I'm always buying top of the line tools. And ever since I started buying tech, mean, I've always worked with my computer. So I, know, I remember the first, the very first Toshiba that I bought, it was hugely expensive. It was, and, and, but it was my work tool. So, you know, I bought it.

Fabrice Neuman (10:25)
That would be better,

And mind you people, it was in Francs at the time, not even in Euros.

Anne Trager (10:51)
yeah, no, it was, yeah, it was that, that long ago, right? But I remember saving up for it because I knew that having something higher, you know, higher up on the scale would be, hopefully, would hopefully work better. Okay. So that's my first rule. The second rule is that I, I really do try to know the basics and about how to use the tools and I try to keep up to date.

I not to an excessive extent because I just need to understand basically how it works. And I also totally, totally, totally own my impatience. And I have somebody, that's you Fabrice, who takes care of my systems and whatnot.

Another rule that is important to me is the boundaries and I put boundaries on my tech both in time and in place. So I have hard stops and hard starts. I do not use tech before a certain time in the morning. I do not use it after a certain time at night. I never have any notifications on which annoys everybody who wants to try to reach me.

I am a strong believer in asynchronous communication and with me it is very asynchronous.

I also try to keep my phone invisible when I'm dealing with other people so that I'm not distracted by it. There is research that shows that the mere presence of a smartphone negatively influences attention, whether you're interacting with it or not. So I'm very attentive to that.

And I have no social media on my phone. I only have it on my laptop, which is a way for me to manage my interaction with it. And I only have it in a specific browser. So I've created friction. So it makes it hard to actually get to the social media. Like that browser is always closed. I have to open it and so forth. I have to log in so that it is hard for me to get to it. So I've created friction so that I don't get sucked into the never ending scroll.

Fabrice Neuman (12:57)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (13:10)
And I do love the tech. And so when I have tech that works, unlike the vacuum cleaner, I use it and I use it all the time. I have an Oura ring, which is a smart ring that tracks my sleep and my exercise and my resilience. I love it when I get crowns on my Oura ring. I fawn over how it tells me my cardiac health is nine and sometimes even 10 years younger than my age. However accurate that is, I love to hear that kind of stuff. Okay. It makes me happy.

Fabrice Neuman (13:38)
Hmm.

Anne Trager (13:40)
I also use in our integrated system, I use things like Apple Fitness Plus because we're in an Apple ecosystem and I use it all the time. Seriously, it is the service that I use most, I think. It has all kinds of exercises that I can do and I have no excuse because if I only have five minutes, they actually have five-minute core work and they have... you know, 45-minute yoga sessions and then whatever I want is there. So it doesn't, so I have no excuses. And that's one of the things that I do is to try to set up things that are so easy, I can't not do that.

Fabrice Neuman (14:23)
I understand. As far as I'm concerned... So yeah, you were describing how you were using the technology and what you like, what you don't like and stuff like that. So I guess the elephant in the room for us is the Apple ecosystem that we mentioned already several times. It's true that we are basically an Apple family, basically based on a decision I made made probably 20 years ago when, I'm the,

Anne Trager (15:55)
Mm

Fabrice Neuman (16:00)
When we discussed the subject, the topics for this podcast, I thought, okay, it's going to be a trap for me because I'm going to be described as the Apple guy, which is probably true. I guess our daughter would say so. But the thing is I made that decision 20 years ago after being Editor in chief for a magazine called PC Expert. I would like people to know that. I would like to emphasize that.

I tried that and I made this decision because at the time already the proposition from Apple was to have several tools that would work together as a group, which is what I like in technology. And for me, living well with technology means also that the possibility for tools to work together so you can go from one tool to the next with the same kind of information.

Anne Trager (16:53)
Hmm.

Fabrice Neuman (16:58)
with your data that you can use and read and access. So for example, and to bounce back to what you were saying about the phone that you want to use less, one thing I'm doing to achieve the same result is to use the Apple Watch. And I also... have and it's been a couple years maybe. I have a cellular Apple Watch. It means that more often than not when I leave the house, I don't take my phone with me because I know that I can still receive calls from you, for example, also from my clients because it's important for me to stay connected. So I'm a bit less asynchronous as you are because I need to make sure that I can answer my clients' calls.

But the thing is, if I don't have my phone with me, then I'm not as tempted to look at social medias, for example, which I do have on my phone. For some time I tried not to have social media apps on my phone, but it was more difficult for me not to have that, to be able to react in a more direct, in more live way, if you will. So.

But that's the thing. So the Apple Watch for me was a means to make sure that I would use my phone less. And what I take from what you said as well is that, you don't even have your phone on your desk more often than not as well. So you're not tempted to use it. And there's, once again, there's a piece of technology, a new feature that's gonna help me do that.

And it's part of the new Mac OS 15 Sequoia and iOS 18 where you can actually have your iPhone screen mirroring on your computer, on your Mac. Obviously, I'm talking about Apple ecosystem. So your phone can be in another room and you can still access when you want.

Anne Trager (19:07)
Hmm.

Fabrice Neuman (19:19)
activate the the phone screen mirroring, and you can see your phone screen, access it, use it, and then close it. So I think this is gonna help me do that. I wanted to make sure that, so obviously when you're in the Apple ecosystem, a lot of people also call that the Apple walled garden, and it's very true. the other thing, I think it helped

Anne Trager (19:43)
Mm

Fabrice Neuman (19:49)
me, I find it more comfortable to be in that ecosystem. It's also, it makes in some ways my job more difficult because the decision I made was for me, but obviously for you and for the whole family. somewhat recently I tried to reintegrate and use an Android phone and it's impossible to make it work with the whole system we have at home because we have phones, we have Apple watches, we have Apple TV, everything works together and it's not very good at letting other tools get in.

Anne Trager (20:30)
Yes, I remember you trying that.

Fabrice Neuman (20:33)
Yeah, and I tried really hard and trying to make sure that I could access everything on this Android phone, like the calendars. And it's obviously a problem with text messages, for example. And if I wanted to make sure that we would keep, for example, the group text messages we have, then I would have to have you change some of the tools because ... And it's less of a problem in Europe as it is in the US, as I know that, but still the iMessage you know, the green bubble, blue bubble thing. When you're in it, it's pretty difficult to get out. And obviously, for us to be living well with technology, I have to make sure that I don't have to...

Anne Trager (21:16)
Mm -hmm.

Fabrice Neuman (21:31)
...make you change your choices more than, yes, if I want to live well in my home, basically. But then what I want to say is part of living well with technology for me, the conclusion I came to was I like, and it's a...

Anne Trager (21:37)
Exactly, I was going to say not only with technology, but with me.

Fabrice Neuman (21:58)
...more efficient and more pleasurable when your tools work together. And this is where I believe Apple is pretty good at that. And so you have to go through hoops and you have to probably spend more money because as we know, Apple tools are more expensive on average. But this is what I get from it. And maybe in order not to be too considered as the Apple guy,

You were mentioning the robot vacuum cleaner, which, okay, I agree is not very good. Still, this is a robot from a Chinese company called Switchbot. And their approach is to have a whole bunch of different tools that integrate into their own app. And it's pretty good as well in that regard because all those tools can work together.

And I like this approach, whichever company we're talking about. So I guess that would be my conclusion for that, which is, have your tools work together. It brings more peace of mind.

Anne Trager (23:12)
Okay, well that brings us to something really practical that people can do.

Fabrice Neuman (23:17)
Yes. Well, so the practical thing, yeah, the piece of advice I would give people is to, first of all, don't be like me and don't change your tools all the time. But I don't consider myself normal in that regard because, okay, it's my passion, it's my job. I also have to make sure that I can...

Anne Trager (23:32)
I second that. I second that.

Fabrice Neuman (23:45)
If I want to be a good consultant to companies, need to make sure that I try tools that I be able to advise people to use. But in your daily life, in your home, make sure that if you find a tool that works, keep using it. Even if sometimes you think, maybe there's something better that I could use before changing, think about the use case.

Maybe you can still make do with the tools you already have. And further in that direction, make sure that as far as possible, use the tools that come with, by default, with the system you use, whether it's Apple, Mac and what have you, or Windows. There are in all those systems, and of course on your smartphones,

There are apps and tools that come by used by default. If you think a bit ahead of time, if you use them, when you change from one smartphone to the next, because after a few years you want to have a new one, if you use the default apps, then it will be much easier to go from one device to the next. So yeah, don't try to be too inventive with your tools, I would say.

Anne Trager (25:06)
Mm, mm, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a really good idea. I know that when I was thinking about my task management, I do a lot of work with people on how they can get organized. And so I needed to figure out for myself how I could get organized. And I find that using the actual ecosystem that's in place, which as we all know now is an Apple ecosystem, it allows me to really have a very streamlined task management system in place that works for me. And, you know, I have, I use reminders so that I have a list that anytime I think of anything, no matter what it is and what project it is related to, whether it's personal or work related, I can toss it onto that list, either by speaking it or by typing it in using whatever device I am on. And, you know, I call that my brain dump list. And then I will check in with that every day and dispatch those tasks into projects, only adding dates when they're pertinent and when a date is added, then it goes onto the calendar and so on. And so I have this way of organizing my tasks in a way that does not get overwhelming and nothing gets lost. Then, well, we can talk about time management at some other time because we're going to go over our time otherwise. Okay. Okay. Let's manage our time now. But so the ecosystem is a really, really interesting thing to set that up. So we've been talking about this really small scale, you and me, how we do with this, what we do with tech. So what about something bigger? Just share something big with us, something optimistic about tech.

Fabrice Neuman (26:37)
Yeah, so let's manage our time, absolutely.

Yeah, so I wanted to talk about this YouTube video by Cleo Abram. I urge people to actually subscribe to her YouTube channel. She's amazing. But so this particular video, it's a 15 minute video, basically talking about farm robots, farming robots and how they can at the same time increase yields because we are going to need more food for the 10 billion people living on earth pretty shortly. And even doing that still lower the usage of chemicals, either herbicides or fertilizers. And the tech in there is amazing. So I think we've all seen all those ginormous tractors and machines and stuff like that on

And obviously it's taking place in the US or everything there is bigger than anywhere else. But what I liked also is, for example, one example to lower the use of chemicals is the use of lasers to kill weeds in fields instead of using chemicals. And she shows that pretty accurately.

This is where I, you know, maybe it sounds a bit too much like, how would you call that when in order to solve a problem, you, you throw more technology at it. Maybe it's that, but the demonstration she gives in that video is amazing. Plus the tech is amazing. So, obviously looking tech, whichever it is, I love it. So, we'll put the link in the show notes so you can.

Go see, watch that video, it's amazing.

Anne Trager (28:55)
I look forward to watching that and learning a little bit more about some of these innovative ways to use technology to make everybody's life better. I would say fewer chemicals will make our lives better. So yay, go lasers.

Fabrice Neuman (29:18)
All right, that's it for episode two. Thanks for listening. You can find all the links mentioned in this episode in the show notes directly in your podcast app. Yeah, they there, look for them. And don't forget to go to our website, humanpulsepodcast.com to find more information and all of our previous episodes. And also on the website, you can send us feedback. This is humanpulsepodcast.com.

Anne Trager (29:45)
Thanks for subscribing, sharing, and please do leave us a review it really helps. And we'll talk to you next month.

Fabrice Neuman (29:53)
Bye y 'all.