The Future of Now Radio → on Falling to Pieces

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A Panel Interview with Bonnie Graham, host of The Future of Now, on Falling to Pieces? Techno-Human Game Changers to the Rescue

“Humans have been co-evolving with their technologies since the dawn of prehistory…. Coping with this new means liberating ourselves from such categories as ‘human,’ ‘technological,’ and ‘natural’ to embrace a new techno-human relationship” (Allenby & Sarewitz). “Growing up I always considered the interaction of humanity and technology presented in the original Star Trek series as a fairly accurate representation of the way things would someday go. Then came the Next Generation’s Borg…our future may have more in common with the Borg” (J. Huang). Uncertainty and dramatic changes are not new, but our human window of tolerance is being stretched to the limit more than ever. As a global civilization, we’ve been catapulted into the awareness that we need new technohuman ecosystems. How we react, adapt and evolve will define our success. We’ll ask Judy Ryan, Jacob Perkins, Marti Konstant and Lynda Roth for their take on Falling to Pieces? Technohuman Game-Changers to the Rescue!

Interview Transcript

where does yesterday’s future which is already here here here here meet today’s future which is about to happen and tomorrow’s future which could be just minutes away welcome to technology Revolution the future of now where host Bonnie D Graham asks Savvy futurists for their predictions about the tech driven trends that are shaping our future right now now here’s your host who will take us into the future of now Bonnie D Graham that always sounds so woo woo and I always laugh when I hear now now now that’s Ryan treasure VP of everything I call him at World talk radio the business Channel I’m Bonnie D Graham and this is technology Revolution the future of now we have a topic today we’re bringing you that I know absolutely nothing about I have a panel of experts I’m just going to start with some Buzz quotes you know I like to start with what’s the buzz on the street so let me start with with two quotes and I’ll be introducing a word that we’re going to learn about the word is technum some people spell it as one word with no hyphen I have a couple of Articles here that spell it hyphenated te e c hn o hyphen human so here we go here’s a quote from the technum condition uh book by Braden Allenby and Daniel sarowitz here we go humans have been co-evolving with their technology since the dawn of prehistory I didn’t know they had technology in prehistory what is different now is that we’ve moved Beyond external technological interventions to transform ourselves from the inside out even as we also remake the Earth itself coping with this new means liberating ourselves listen up everyone liberating ourselves from such categories as human ooh technological oo and natural to embrace a new technum relationship okay that’s Buzz number one here’s Buzz number two this is from jend Andrew Wong Hua n g and his article is the technum condition same title here he says growing up I always considered the interaction of humanity and Technology presented in the original Star Trek series as a fairly accurate representation of the way things would someday go then came the next generation’s Borg with the way things are going our future may have more in common with the Borg so let me give you a little background now that’s the end of our two Buzz quotes there will be more change in the next 10 years and actually probably in the next 10 months and in the last 100 years uncertainty and dramatic change are not new for us no we’ve gone through many disruptions but our human window of Tolerance is being stretched to the Limit more than ever now we’re in a global pandemic trying to emerge as we try to navigate this new not normal as a global civilization we have been catapulted just thrust into the awareness that we need new technum ecosystems there’s that word how we react adapt and evolve will become the measure of our success not only you and me as human being and individuals but as communities and Nations I have four experts I have life workk system CEO Judy Ryan who was kind enough to put together this panel and offer this topic we have transdisciplinary practitioner Jacob Perkins we have workplace futurist and author Marty constant and futurist Linda Roth and we’re going to ask them for their take so the topic today is falling to pieces question mark question mark question mark technum game changers to the rescue welcome to everyone and now it’s time for my panelist to intr uce themselves Judy Ryan please tell us what you do take about two minutes Judy what you do and what in the world is techn human talk to me yeah well you mentioned Star Trek so technum I mean when I was a kid we watched them flip open the phone you know it’s something like a cell phone and that’s really we are techn human even this radio show is techn human we’re all on the phone it’s all filtering into a website it’s going to be you know dispersed through technology so we’ve been technum for a long time that’s all that means is our ability to apply technology to the human behaviors conditions and objectives and what I do is my company specializes in performance excuse me Performance Management mostly within corporate settings uh and and it’s really focusing on what is the evolution of culture right now what kinds of conditions need to happen for people to be able to what’s called pivot which is move quickly to embrace change so businesses have to move more quickly um individuals have to know how to function more agile in workplace and in just in life in general so I help create the conditions and conversations for that within a culture model and so that’s primarily what I do thank you very much Judy and thanks for suggesting the topic as I said it sounds interesting to me why not so here you are and thank you for getting the other three panelists with us let’s meet them right now so let’s go around the table to Jacob Perkins Jacob please introduce yourself and tell me what in the world is a trans disciplinary practitioner Jacob welcome good morning Bonnie first off let me say I appreciate your uh love for all things Star Trek I’m most certainly a trekky and well familiar with uh first Contact and the board um that’s something that actually first through my interest in the integration of technology and and humanity and what that means um for us moving over the next years I’m growing up now don’t worry but I’ve still seen all the movies I’m never going to grow up Jacob go ahead when I say trans disciplinary science what I mean is we’re not necessarily looking at any given phenomenon whether it’s in business whether it’s in health care whether it’s in one of the more specialty medicines from just oh well this is your take on this phenomenon this is your take in phenomenon I’m talking about a meta language scientifically for understanding something so when I say I’m a transis FL practitioner that tends to me both an integration of constructs from different different places whether that means Psychiatry or social work or counseling or psychology or even how way outside that right business um but it means kind of pre co-creating with someone else in new language and that tends to involve technology because as the methods have changeed with technology for researching understanding and trying to Grapple them with any issues comes that change in language so yes I think traditionally I’m very much uh a practitioner in my field which is clinical social work but my larger background and experience allows me to be transdisciplinary and that’s something that I appreciate thank you very interesting thank you for that nice to meet you Jacob I I appreciate your explanation there and I’m glad you like Star Trek and listen some of us are committed to never growing up and I’m leading that pack so you can get right in line behind me you don’t have to grow up especially not for this show Jacob thank you let’s move around the panel before Jacob and I get into more trouble here here let’s go to Marty constant I want to tell you if you’re looking her up her first name is m a r t and her last name starts with a k k o n s t a n t Marty welcome to technology Revolution and please tell us who you are and what you do and tell us about your book okay um my name is Marty con of course I research write train and speak on the topic of career agility and Workforce agility and what does this have to do with I also talk about the future of work in my training the future of work is dependent on how we as human beings are going to interact respond to and react to the changes that are happening prior to this pandemic the biggest problem we had in corporations was how are we going to adapt to all of this fast change that problem is not going away it is busier in the next 10 10 years than it in the past 100 years and the book is really about studying how some people just naturally respond to change and grow with it they’re more um flexible than stagnant they’re uh they’re not um they’re not steadfast in their thinking they are have more of a growth

mindset interesting um tell me something Marty how did you get involved in all of this did you have a Star Trek humble beginning or or the Jetson perhaps or or what what got you interested in this especially the agility part my great my first job out of college was with a tech company and I have been with technology ever since I started out my career as a designer and I ended up working with Engineers my entire career and got real curious as they do about how things work and got very curious about how they look at things like agility how they design things get feedback tweak it refine it and then bring it to Market and then do that over and over again not like we used to do technology we we do technology and fast iterations now thank you very much Marty pleasure to meet you we have a lot to learn from you during the show and let’s move around the table to Linda Roth and if you’re looking for her she spells her last name l y n d a Roth r o t Linda Roth welcome and why don’t you tell us who you are and what you do hi thanks very much Bonnie uh it’s nice to be on the panel with everybody today uh I am I have well I got in technology at a very young age I graduated from high school when I was 17 and didn’t know what I wanted to do and my high school counselor suggested I go to the Community College and take up the new curriculum on computer science I was like okay I don’t know what that is but he told me I could graduate in two years and get a job making a lot ofy money so that was the ticket for me I ended up being a Mainframe developer and um enjoyed that but then as I learned more and more and I was a student of business I started uh branching out and and growing in my career becoming a manager in it and then I started working for a software company then I started my own software company that was probably really my biggest transition was I started a softare company to create a business information system and um we we built that company a little while and then uh we had what I talk about as our digital transformation jogger nut where technology changed from Mainframe to to smaller computers and my partners didn’t want to redesign our system on the newer technology so Our Fate did not end well but it was okay for me because then I started my career of going in and helping compan transform and I’ve been doing that since the early 1990s and it’s gone into high gear now and so I work with businesses to how to transform their whole business to a digital business Linda Ross also in the process of publishing my book on digital transformation which is geared to um getting companies to on it’s geared toward Executives it’s called an executive guide To Survive and Thrive and so it’s all about how to change your business Linda Roth you have no idea how much you and I have in common I was a young divorce a with two children transplanted from New York to Eugene Oregon I needed to go to work I was 27 I had never had a job never earned a living here I was 3,000 mil from my family and my mother and father sent me brochures on different careers and one of them was computer programmer and I checked my my lady friends in Eugene said there’s a community college two bus rides away I didn’t know in a car Linda and I went out to the college and I said what is this thing called computer science what they said the class is full but enroll anyway and within two weeks of the start of the class half the people will drop out because they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into they said we will enroll you you will come and take a chair in the room and in two weeks it will thin out and we’ll have the people who want to so I did that Linda and I ended up getting I already had a master’s degree I ended up getting two degrees in computer operations and programming and the college hired me right out of school to become a Mainframe programmer for a Community college-wide Information System in the state of Oregon what do you think of that and that’s how I went a degree in and I was we’re talking I don’t know how old you are dear I’m not going to ask you but I was key punching and I was working on a xero Sigma 6 cp5 programming in Cobalt and I was was a crackerjack programmer I could I could just go home and do whatever I needed to do they hired me to do uh I’ll call it um uh Shadow programming if you will uh stealth programming they needed extra programs so they would pay me out of slush funds from the community college around the states a whole bunch of them and they would say go home and write a couple of thousand lines and come in Monday and run it we need some extra program so I was my own contract programmer this was back in the day and then I graduated to an IBM 4341 with pl1 for another systems uh systems company in Oregon a few days a few years later so welcome Linda I haven’t met anybody who went through it sounds very very similar with the community college degrees and yes I’m proud of them that was my graduate school so on that note guess what I’m going to do my first advertisement we have two advertisers here today on the show and then Judy Ryan you’re going to get ready to explain the quote you sent me and I’ll read the quote in a minute so let’s go to my ads here we are welcoming back advertisers that started with us a couple of weeks ago we have plume p l m e it’s a cloud-based software company specializing in a suite of smart home services it’s more than just an evolution of what a lot of you know as mesh Wi-Fi plume offers Hardware called pods pods that provide Wi-Fi coverage throughout your house if needed plume gives you great Wi-Fi and network security and guess what it seamlessly integrates with your existing network and on a personal note the gentleman whose voice introduced the show Ryan at voice America uses plume he tells me his streaming speed has increased for Netflix online video games because plume’s Advanced self-optimization of adaptive Wi-Fi make sure the parts of his home that use 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to plume p.com and here’s the code Tech Revolution te e c h re v o l u t i o n and the special discount will be applied at the checkup that’s p l m.com t c re v o l u t i o n Tech Revolution thank you very much plume for being our sponsor and now let’s go back to the show and let’s go around the table Judy Ryan has sent me a quote let me find it here Judy here we go send me a quote from Samuel arbisman and it’s from his 2012 book The halflife of facts why everything we know has an expiration date and arbisman is an expert in the field of scientometrics which is the science of science I’ll just leave it there Judy tell us what the quote has to do with our topic please um well the quote is so important because right now we are experiencing things having an expiration date most people resistant to that so the reason the quote is so important to me is that we’re unaware of our change blindness problem and and one of the biggest reasons it’s a problem is because we don’t want to look inside and see that maybe what we’re thinking and doing could be outdated we’re not uncomfortable or ashamed if we upgrade our phones but we’re uncomfortable and ashamed if we’re asked to upgrade things like our social and emotional intelligence skills and so I just find it really interesting that that’s a huge problem and we’re all kind of being forced into it whether we’re Kicking and Screaming or not as Marty said some of us are more adaptable more excited to upgrade and change and others kind of hold on to the old status quo yep and in business today you have to be agile we know that I think as human beings we have to be agile Judy Judy how many of us ever thought we would be sequestered isolated self-quarantined I haven’t left my home other than my car screams at me every 10 days take me out for a ride Mommy I need exercise yes it says that to me other than that I haven’t left the house in almost 2 months but I work from home as a broadcaster anyway but I am in two bands I’m a drummer and I haven’t seen my bandmates our concerts were cancelled we don’t have practices and it’s very hard playing together remotely so I am having to be agile in filling in with other things to keep my sanity and I think that’s what’s going on around the world thank you Judy let’s turn to Jacob Perkins and Jacob has sent us a quote from I hope I’m pronouncing this right zigmont Balman and the book is globalization the human consequences Balman 1925 to 2017 was a Polish British sociologist and philosopher one of the world’s most eminent social theorists very interesting okay Jacob here’s the quote you sent me questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we we owe our fellow humans and ourselves whoa Jacob talk to me this is pretty headyy stuff here what does it mean for our topic today the thing I like about this quote is and again keep in mind Bowman was a 20th century he was a social theorist but he was really a globalization theorist that’s the title of his book and as morbid as it sounds he did focus on some of the consequences of what he saw emerging in the mid 20th century you know the the connectivity between markets between cultures between people and if ever there’s a context right now with the pandemic of asking ourselves what needs to change and why we need to change it especially in the context of human life um those are the type of questions we have to ask so whether that means right now the flexibility we have to abandon um travel temporarily to protect other countries or even other communities to some of the more long-standing practices like um consumption and environmentalism and risk um those that’s that’s what this question is hinting at so relatedly you know being agile enough to change right now not necessarily hold on to some of those expectations at least at the individual level that things will just be the same for my generation or my lifetime too as well that’s something that that’s pretty important with this quote thank you very much Jacob very interesting let’s move around to Marty constant Marty has sent us a quote I’ve never heard of any of these authors so welcome to the authors on the show as well Ryan holiday spells his name just like the word holiday the obstacle is the way Ryan holiday very much alive and well 1987 birth year he’s an American Author marketer entrepreneur and founder of the creative advisory firm brass check and what’s interesting he has created media stunts for the marketing the apparel company American Apparel and he is a media columnist and editor at large for the New York Observer and he has written on the topic of media manipulation ooh interesting Marty the topic you sent the quote you sent is stop looking for angels and start looking for angles well that’s an interesting one Marty what does this mean for our topic techn human today yes so one of the things that Ryan Holliday talks about in this book and in a lot of his work is his belief in the learnings and the teachings of Marcus Aurelius the things that we’re doing now to be able to get through something is to go through it not around it it’s taking personal responsibility and personal accountability ility seriously so instead of looking externally it’s an intrinsic intrinsically motivated world that will get you there and people like back in the time like when IBM was really growing it was the IBM way everybody followed and got trained and or PNG or sap it was great to get trained there but what is important in today’s world is we have to be self-directed in the way that we adapt to these changes and the way that we manage our own careers it’s no longer about worrying about HR or training what are they going to do for me are they going to put me on a track it is about taking care of that yourself so intrinsically motivated versus extrinsically motivated and this is the only way bnie that we are going to adapt to the changes that are going to continue coming towards us it’s the only way we’re going to be able to pair up with the technology as in cobots it’s the only way forward thank you very much I like the optimism Marty that’s what we’re looking forward to even if we have to be very more focused than we thought we would just the optimism and the hope is a good thing right now thank you Linda Roth has sent a quote uh now I’m not surprised you picked a quote from Grace Hopper Linda uh near and dear to me Grace Grace Brewster Murray Hopper nay Murray mber 1906 to January 1992 boy she died before her time I’m sorry she should have been around to see what we’re doing now an American Computer scientist and US Navy rear admirable Admiral and an admirable Admiral she popularized the idea of machine independent programming language which led to the development of cobalt I still have my silver Cobalt programming manual I really do and green bar paper this was an early highlevel programming language still in use today I don’t know if anybody knows but the US Navy Arley Berg class guided missile destroyer USS Hopper was named for her and the cray xc6 Hopper super computer at NC was named for her Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world in her lifetime Yale named a college after her she received the national medal of technology in 91 and she was posthumously awarded the presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama in 2016 quite a lady and uh I’m honored I think you are Linda to be considered some of the early women in Tech well after Grace Hopper obviously so here’s the quote someday on the corporate balance sheet there will be an entry which reads information for in most cases the information is more valuable than the hardware which processes it Oh Linda I’m getting Goosebumps tell me how you picked this wonderful quote well um Bonnie with with you and I both being in in the early years of computers Grace Hopper had a profound effect on my life as as a young woman I heard her speak a couple of times in the late 7s and early 80s and I just thought that she was amazing she as you know she was a diminutive woman and and very much older by the time I saw her right and close to the end of her life and she was just so energetic and had such a futuristic view of the world that I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Grace Hopper and what we see today is what she was saying come true right it artificial intelligence is the ultimate information and we we now have everything coming through from artificial intelligence and even though we don’t have information on the balance sheet the reality is the information that companies have available to them and can utilize is the most important thing in making them profitable and keeping them profitable and surviving um through the next century thank you very much wonderful quote and thank you for I as I said I said H interesting she picked a quote from Grace Hopper who is in my list of quotable people and nobody has done it in a long time so thank you Linda I didn’t know about her I just needed to get a job and I found myself in computer science and absolutely loving it you know what I’m going to take a moment now to welcome our second sponsor today and then we’ll go with our predictions portion of the show so welcome to expressvpn this is their third week with us being stuck at home these days you all know what I’m talking about you probably don’t think much about internet privacy on your own home network do you believe that if you fire up incognito mode on your browser have you tried it you think no one can see what you’re doing that’s wrong even incognito mode your online activity can still be traced even if you clear your browsing history how many of us have done that your internet service provider ISP can still see every single website you have ever visited that’s why I never go online even at home without using expressvpn that’s all one word expressvpn makes sure your Internet service 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so that’s ex p s expressvpn you know how to spell that I just did expressvpn.com techrev te c re V that’s the code for the show expressvpn.com techrev to learn more and thank you to expressvpn for continuing to sponsor our show and now it’s say by the way if you’re just tuning in our topic today fascinating falling to pieces question mark question mark question mark you may think you are well technum game changers to the rescue and that’s why we’re speaking today with Judy Ryan at life work systems Jacob Perkins in an empathetic interdisciplinary practitioner and I just found out his Twitter handle is empathy JP Marty constant a futurist and U Linda Roth l y NDA Roth and they are just people interested in technum and fascinating backgrounds we’ve already covered them so Judy Ryan I’m going to read your prediction number one which is very detailed I’ll read just a little bit tell you what why don’t you take about two minutes to explain it and instead of going around the table I’ll pick one from Jacob and then one from Marty and then one from Linda and let’s see how many predictions we can cover in the 20 minutes or so we have left to the show actually 25 minutes so Judy Ryan told me the following if you do not we do not invest in the evolution of organizational culture most initiatives in life and work will be disappointing and fail today changes happening at the speed of imagination often causing high levels of confusion and strain on individuals and organizations Judy what’s the prediction here help me with this well most people don’t recognize that the you hear the terms resilience agility um cross functional teamwork you know that those are ways that people have to function in the world but because we a lot of organizations and even in schools and in families they don’t realize the evolution of culture and if you don’t understand where the culture is evolving you’re going to be left behind I mean all the Fortune 500 companies 55 of them are all I mean 22 are all that are left from 1955 so change is happening and if we don’t recognize the needs of the people like I want to just play on Marty’s comments about intrinsically motivated and personally responsible people if you don’t have those people in your organization you won’t be able to stay ahead of the Competitive Edge that is out in front of you and that’s why you’ll be disappointed in and fail as an organization is because you’ll be spending too much energy and time on managing um really emotional intelligence issues within your organization and if I were to say probably what’s the most important about this prediction is that one of the things that I do as the first priority is spit in the soup of the autocratic and control-based approaches we’ve used uh control cultures for hundreds of years and they look like they work if I you know if I threaten you you’re going to get written up or fired it might put make you snap in order or if I dangle carrots in front of you but what happens is these weaken the intrinsic motivation and there’s other control models as well and we still fall back on those not realizing those are the primary reasons were failing the primary reasons we have a 71% disengagement level year after year after year and so it’s just it’s less able to even sustain us through more now than it has ever been with the pandemic it’s just really stretched but it’s it has been for some time thank you Judy interesting let’s go to Jacob’s number one prediction he predicts very simply the acceleration of tella health and Health iot Market Jacob what do you see what I see is I see Leaps and Bounds in the technum ecosystem because of the pandemic you know we have the theory of punctuated equilibrium which holds the populations of living organisms tend to experience uh really high levels of change in these kind of short stressful times you know here in March we certainly saw all these Healthcare entities and organizations shifting their service platforms because of the pandemic we saw new reimbursement policies for the center for Medicare and Medicaid which you know funds a large chunk of um healthcare services for nonprofit systems nationally and so now we have all these new service lines that have emerged to meet a wide range of client needs for me particularly Behavioral Health is what I’ve seen and so we have all this efficacy data from all this rapid deployment over the last five weeks so now at least the ones who have the capacity in in their organizations themselves can focus on scalability and sustainability so that Healthcare iot that tele medicine service platform that’s certainly going to be a growth Market one because the need is going to be there and two because of the rapid deployment and push right now over the last month um that’s what I’ve seen yeah thank you very much Jacob interesting let’s go to prediction number one from Marty constant and Marty says organizations and individuals who do not observe changes that includes economic financial industry technology health and pandemics and take action to adapt and respond will fade away to a state of irrelevance at the macro level companies and ecosystems who fail to acknowledge this Con and flux will fail and fade away or have already done so ooh that’s a dire prediction but probably very accurate Marty tell me more please yes so Bonnie this prediction is very very darwinian if you don’t react to the change and do something about it I often have a saying that when change is swirling around you that’s a signal that something’s happening and it’s a signal for you to take some sort of action so I always say when change happens don’t do nothing because if you don’t do anything and you don’t do something you are going to become irrelevant nobody wants to be irrelevant and I’d like to go back to uh what Judy’s quote originally was she was talking about halflife the halflife that I see the halflife of the returns to education are less than five years they used to be 20 years 25 years ago so there’s a constant need to iterate your skills and your learning in a way that is constant it’s not about going for the big win yes we’re going to get degrees and yes we’re going to get certificates but we are going to do things like microlearning during the flow of our work day we are going to be doing some of those other things so that we can keep up with it and I will give you three examples of companies who didn’t respond technology all the way Kodak did not acknowledge the existence of digital photography Nokia I used to work in the mobile business the mobile handset the mobile uh software business Blackberry didn’t believe that you know people you know couldn’t do without a keyboard borders we know what happened there so these These are examples of companies but people like Steve Jobs when he was alive was always adapting to change Oprah Winfree is always adapting to change those are the kinds of people that are going to continue moving forward and in this age of AI and machine learning and things like blockchain if we don’t pair up with these Technologies now even during the pandemic start start thinking about how your role is going to be impacted by the technology thank you Marty I have to tell you I work for noia too I was on the marketing team for the intellisync suite remember when they bought that yep okay I was I was one of the marketing people and I worked in the Absolut gorgeous White Plains office White Plains New York in executive whatever executive row and the building was a sight to behold it had inside waterfalls and reclaimed wood and stone walls in in the stairwells stone walls with water cascading down we had our own restaurant it it was really it was worth driving over the white stone bridge what’s that it was a great company that still exists as a you know a smaller version of themselves but it was a great company that also they had a couple poor Acquisitions too yes I I remember it well I remember going in and I remember being asked to go out so we’ll leave it at that but I loved working for them was fascinating so let’s move to Linda Roth Linda prediction number one Marty covered a little bit but I want to get your take on this it’s slightly different you say all businesses need to become technology Centric organizations in any company that does not become a digital business in the next 5 to 10 years will not survive Linda let’s look back a little bit over the rear the rear view if you don’t mind and say any company that hasn’t already become Tech Centric and digitally transformed is going to have trouble getting through what the next 12 to 18 months can we say that or I don’t want to put a prediction in your mouth but Linda tell me your observation no I agree with you because the companies that had already started down that road or had gotten pretty much through it are the ones that are doing well right now if you look let’s just take restaurants for example one of the of the restaurant chains uh started in St Louis where I live but now everybody knows this Panera Bread we here in St Louis still call it St Louis Bread Company um but they had set up a whole bunch of options where you could um go online on the internet or on an app and Order uh a meal that you wanted you could order it any time of the day to be ready at any time of the day that you wanted it to be ready so um and and then you could just drop by the store and have it picked up or you could have it delivered to you and then also inside their stores if you went inside the stores yes you could walk up and and order but you could also go to their kiosk on the store and and put your order and then it would be delivered to your table they already had everything all set up for them so when the pandemic hit yes they’ve been hurt a little bit with inor sales but they had a whole uh ability for customers to move straight into being able to work with them in a digital environment and and Order their product where a whole lot of other restaurants were just you know they had no way of doing that except calling on the telephone and uh so that’s what I mean but it’s also products and services if we look back at the beginning of the 20th century the example I use is in the 1800s you had something that was called an ice box and it really was a box that people put ice to keep food you know cool well when electricity came along and Refrigeration in the early 20th century during the Industrial Revolution you would have been a fool to try and Market ice boxes because everything was moving to electric consumer goods the same is happening now with your consumer products are now becoming intelligent right everything’s going to be connected up to an AI device like Alexa or something else and is going to be intelligent if you don’t design your products and services around that you’re not you’re nobody’s going to buy your products and services any anymore and uh the same is true about how you handle your warehousing and your your back office services and everything you’ve you’ve got to transform and this pandemic has just moved it into warp speed thank you very well put before we go to prediction number two from each of you or a second prediction some of them we’ve already covered I want to read a definition I found on quora for techn humanism and I want to go around the table and see if you all agree with it so bear with me here uh somebody named Alex Ander Fortier a thinker a writer a progressive a human wrote last year techn humanism also known as transhumanism is a movement that envisions a society where technology is so developed and integrated into society that it increases Humanity’s capacity and threshold for human intelligence cognition and physical abilities in a world Changed by techn humanism humans wouldn’t just be better versions of ourselves at some point along the line we may even start to look more like the superheroes in comic books or have the ability to do things that used to be outside of the realm of the possible it would be also enable us to live longer and increasing our well-being let me just go around the table is there anything you agree disagree with that statement about humans would be better versions and more like superheroes and comic books Judy Ryan let’s start with you what’s your thought well my thought is that if we use technology wisely we do enhance the expansion of human potential people can be more they can do more they can accomplish faster better stronger with the information that comes through those platforms so for me um technum is not to replace the human it’s to enhance and increase the the value of the human components so a lot of people are sort of threatened by technology as though it’s going to replace them it’s actually here to help enhance and and develop you further like even the people responding during this Pandemic those that are comfortable with technology are easily shifting from live conferences to Virtual conferences from uh you know live meetings and mentoring sessions to Virtual ones and they’re not thrown by it so I think technum is is to our advantage to become those superheroes thank you very much Jacob Perkins what do you think about that definition of technum transhumanism what do you think I follow transhumanism for a while now you know and I I get the premise it’s a fusion of our medic Consciousness you know all of our senses and our Consciousness you know with that of our digital world and in the case of people who have really hard stins on transhumanism we’re talking about essentially cyborgs right now which only a Nordic country has integrated you know um literal Hardware into their bodies right now I can certainly see how um some parts of our modern world right now particularly uh defense industry uh would like to augment human capabilities with technology but I think L as an AG get most of our society and those in the business world really are focused on the technum ecosystem and the and the ability of technology and Integrated Systems to um give us newer Solutions come up with newer Solutions tilt service platforms build new Knowledge Management systems and the speed of those systems so I think the end conclusion here is that there’s a spectrum of

transhumanism ecosystem and it’s going to vary both as we progress societally and a Industries progress thank you Jacob very thoughtful interesting answer Marty conston join me what do you think um I um I have been doing my first video meetings with Physicians during this pandemic and I have to tell you it’s fantastic it eliminates it keeps me on target with higher valuable work I’m not commuting I’m not waiting they are on time the doctors are on time with these virtual meetings so what’s are not to like about that I’d also like to say that we’re we’re we’re set up for the machines helping us I think I wear contacts that’s considered a medical device that it’s inserted in my body to help me see better people have pacem makers I used to do a lot of work for medical technology companies and there’s lots of implantable devices that are neurological they can be implanted in your brain implanted near your heart so we’re already doing that I think one of the biggest areas of growth is going to be in the biohacking area um as Jacob said people are going to be in the the the researchers that can’t get FDA approval for studies they’re implanting these test AI type machine learning um objects inside themselves and they’re collecting data we consider this On The Fringe right now but autonomous vehicles used to be on The Fringe and they’re starting to get towards emerging Trends now and it isn’t into the mainstream like the phone like we would never go back to having a mobile uh a device not having mobile devices anymore my brother uses it to mimic an artificial pancreas uses his iPhone and two other devices it’s not something that’s being done widely but there’s thousands of people that get together online um to to collaborate with this so that they can be amazing Marty in in the uh in the date in the era of needing to connect and doing it digitally look what we’re discovering thank you for that Linda Roth join me what do you think about this concept of transhumanism agree or disagree with the the decision or the definition I just read well I I agree with it and uh add on to some of the things that Marty said there are a whole bunch of I mean if we remember back in the 60s we had a TV show called maybe it was the 70s the $6 million man right well oh yeah we’re close to the $6 million man now uh in one of the examples I have in my book of using 3D technology there was a doctor recently that generated an inner ear using 3D technology and inserted into a human and he could hear instantly so um we are definitely from that perspective but I also look at technum in terms of working together and so there was a u report a 2018 report uh from the world economic Forum in which they talk about how humans and Technology will work together and you know everybody’s afraid that their jobs are going to be displaced and they say that the estimate is 74 million current jobs will be displaced by machines and algorithms by 2022 but 133 million new jobs will be created they o talk about how uh like Gartner predicts that in 2022 one in five employees will have ai as a coworker now that’s only two years from now and um again from the economic Forum fewer than 5% of jobs will be completely automated while 60% of occupations could have as much as 30% of the responsibilities automated so in in our work environment we are going to be working with tech along with technology and that frees us to do things that are either less dangerous for us or that that we you we use our natural brains and our natural thinking ability right while the while the artificial intelligence does the Munday mundane stuff thank you Linda thank you well we’re almost out of time but I want to mention that uh oh it must have been last year I read an article the question was the headline was are you ready to meet your new AI robot CEO o and do we think there would be a robot CEO in any company of any size anytime soon and we may very I know some people accuse their bosses of sounding like robots the old definition of robots we won’t go there but certainly it certainly is a possibility I am I’m so impressed with the four of you Judy Ryan you did such a a great job of corralling such interesting and well spoken and well prepared people for this panel I am so impressed with you and with Jacob Perkins and Marty conston and Linda Ross so what I want to do is we have just enough time for a prediction of all predictions I’m going to give you each 60 seconds because I need a little time at the end to do the reminders about our wonderful sponsors for today’s show so let me give you each 60 seconds let’s to do a prediction of high level prediction of technum Game Changers to the rescue what will that mean for our listeners let’s say oh I don’t think we can do it for the end of 2020 but maybe as far out as 2025 Judy Ryan you’re up 60 seconds prediction go okay the prediction that I have is really around sustainable systems and that sounds kind of dull to some people but systems thinking is sort of like when um people can look out ahead in a chess game and see 12 moves down the board so what I love about this team and I’m so grateful that you gave us the opportunity to come together is that we’re systems thinkers and so you most people don’t realize that they’re operating under tons of different kinds of systems and if you don’t recognize it around Humanity I think a lot of people’s fear about trans um uh the the trans between techno and human is that they’re going to lose the humanity we’ve already got systems to help us boost humanity and we’ve already been doing systems that have actually diminished Humanity so I think really studying the systems thinkers is a way for the future to be successful and only 8% of the population are systems thinkers so look for them find them look for the people that see the patterns like this team today and they’re out ahead of those patterns so that you can you don’t have to reinvent any wheels so that’s my uh prediction if in the next three to five years if we don’t really recognize the healthiest best practice systems we will feel overwhelmed and discouraged thank you Judy Jacob Perkins I have 45 seconds for you go part of my superpower as a neurodiverse individual is think systems thinking and so being able to systematize especially in the context of this whole pandemic um are complex problems or what some people in sociology might call Wicked problems and applying AI um to those problems to mitigate risk and find Solutions will be part of the future you might see more CEOs both in the public and private sector rely on um things like um computational systems to try to navigate risk um so in that regard you won’t necessarily have a digital CEO as much as you’ll have a CEO that’s augmenting risk analyses and strategic planning through the integration of AI into their Risk Management Systems so yes I’m emphasizing just like Judy the role of systems Dynamics and system thinking with tackling enduring complex problems in the context of a 21st century business landscape thank you Jacob Marty cson I’ve got 30 seconds for you we’re getting shorter and shorter here go ahead Marty quick personal personal brand growth will play a much more prominent role if you want to get ahead of being able to differentiate yourself in an area where we’re going to be commoditized or maybe we think we’re going to be commoditized the way to stand out is to work on yourself and if you’re a system thinker put your point of view out there within organizations or as an individual within the marketplace thank you Marty Linda Roth you get the last 30 seconds before I have to close go ahead Linda well I’m GNA add on to what Marty said in that education will no longer be 1 through K through 12 and then four years or eight years of college for a lifetime career learning will be continual throughout our lifetimes and individuals will have multiple careers throughout their lifetimes and will work longer thank you very much appreciate that all of you what a panel let me do a quick call to action here oh let’s see plume is one of our sponsors plume is offering two years of plume membership to my listeners for 50% off instead of $99 a year pay just $49 a year for two years why because plume understands this is a difficult time for many of our listeners go to plume p.com te Revolution te c re v o l u t i o n and there’s a special discount that will be applied at checkout that’s p.com te Revolution and also protect your online activity today with the VPN we’re trusting to secure our privacy visit my special link expressvpn.com techrev I will spell that e p SS vpn.com te and you’re going to get an extra 3 months for free on a one-year package that’s expressvpn.com te V to learn more thank you to my special panelist Judy Ryan again I really appreciate you’re getting so many experts on this panel we talked about technum and everybody should have learned I certainly did a lot from all of you Judy Ryan Jacob Perkins Marty constant Linda Ross sending all of you my message of be safe be smart be well special thank you to my co-producer Ryan treasure at World talk radio voice America the business Channel all the channels and Aaron Keller my engineer extraordinaire with nerves of Steel he just told me I have 30 seconds so I’m just going to say thank you for tuning in to technology Revolution the future of now remember somebody tells you the future is here uh-uh that was yesterday’s future we’re all part of making today’s future happen you are an important part of it let’s do it right Bonnie DG Graham signing off have a great day bye-bye thank you for joining us for technology Revolution the future of now mark your calendar to join host Bonnie D Graham every Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time 11:00 a.m. eastern on The Voice America business channel to hear how technology is impacting your future [Music]

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