Progression to Analog – Details, episodes & analysis

"I think we have a listening problem" -Stephanie from NYC (name changed)

I interview six people, explore expert opinions (and share my own) re: why it can be tough to have difficult conversations today.

Can scrolling be good for you? Yes, if you take out the doom. I explore different perspectives on scrolling, based on Harvard Medical School research, and a perspective from a UVA Professor on 'hope scrolling'.

• NYC volunteer opportunities
• Boston volunteer opportunities
• LA volunteer opportunities
• Amsterdam volunteer opportunities
• London volunteer opportunities

In this season two trailer, I share milestones and insights from season one including:

• ​Several keynotes, seminars, and talks across the U.S. and Europe, centered around Progression to Analog and related ideas
• ​Upcoming speaking engagements, including World Summit AI and Brain Bar
• ​The growth of Progression to Analog

I recap the first season of Progression to Analog and its three core themes:

1. ​Sociotechnical AI & Communication
2. ​Emotional Techscapes
3. ​Innovation Through Imagination & Failure

AND... I outline some of the upcoming topics for season two!

Book recommendations; out-of-print technology magazines across nine decades; the spectacular and the everyday; what's next? (in terms of our relationship with tech); general reflections after getting home from doing one of the keynotes at AESC's Global Conference at Cornell Tech. My talk was called "From AI to Analog: A Balanced Approach to the New Digital Landscape".

On 26 April 2024, I delivered an educational seminar at Columbia University. This episode of Progression to Analog is an audio / video (slides) transcription of this talk on Neurodiversity in the Workplace!

By some estimations, neurodiverse people make up ~17-20% of the workforce. A myriad of studies and outlets such as Harvard Business Review highlight neurodiversity as a competitive advantage to be embraced in the future of work. For example, neurodivergent people tend to have higher chaos tolerance. In my seminar, (among other topics) I discussed how the unique abilities of neurodiverse individuals, such as hyperfocus, creativity, and exceptional pattern recognition, can dramatically enhance team performance and drive innovation.

I also highlight how "Progression to Analog" as a tool for neurodiverse workplace success. I will be following up with more tips related to this in a future episode of this podcast.

If you're listening to this via Apple Podcasts and want to see the slides, the talk may also be accessed on YouTube via this link.

On 28 May at re:publica in Berlin, Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson and I (Caitlin Begg) will be speaking together in a joint talk called "Freedom to Fail".

Amy is 2x #1 Management Thinker in the World Per Thinkers50 and author of "Right Kind of Wrong," 2023 Financial Times and Schroder's Business Book of the Year.

In this short episode of Progression to Analog, we speak more about re:publica and our upcoming talk, which centers around who has the freedom to fail, failure as a privilege, technology's tendency to exacerbate these issues, and what to do about them. More about our upcoming talk here.

Founded in 2007, republica GmbH's re:publica Berlin is Europe's largest digital society festival. re:publica participants represent a cross-section of (digital) society, which include professionals from economics, politics, business, hacker culture, NGOs, media, and marketing, as well as bloggers, activists, artists, and social media experts.

Invented by French writer Alfred Jarry in early 20th century France, ‘pataphysics is often defined as the science of imaginary solutions, the realm beyond the possible (additional to metaphysics), or as a way to describe a universe supplementary to this one.

In this episode of Progression to Analog, Apocraphyl Pataphysics author Peter Clarke and I discuss the influence of pataphysics on art (Surrealism, Dadaism, etc.), creative outputs, perceptions of reality, futurism, and more. We also speak about portals, shadow worlds, syzygy, clinamen, pseudo-cyclical time, psychogeography (upcoming episode on this!), non-places, and urban mythology.

Some of the articles referenced in the episode:

• Pataphysics: A Tool for Creativity by Peter Clarke
• What Happened to Patapsychology? by Peter Clarke
• What the Suburb Haters Don't Understand Julie Beck, the Atlantic

Recommended Reading:

• ⁠Apocraphyl Pataphysics⁠⁠
• 'Pataphysics: A Useless Guide
• 'Pataphysics Wikipedia Page

Peter Clarke:

• Personal Website
• Podcast - Team Futurism

I felt an inexplicable feeling a few weeks ago, and turned to GPT-4 to help explain it. I was feeling nostalgia for a time I've never known, a longing for an unexperienced past. GPT identified this as "anemoia".

In this episode, I explain anemoia, relate it to technology (as it pertains to childhood, college, etc.) and especially to NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt's book "The Anxious Generation", a paradigm-shifting book calling for a move away from a phone-based childhood and back toward a play-based childhood. A PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.

"The desire to play returns to destroy the hierarchical society which banished it" -Raoul Vaneigem

In this episode, I speak with Zurich-based entrepreneur, author, speaker, and scientist Dr. Christian Hugo Hoffmann. We first speak about Christian's entrepreneurial and professional endeavors, including House of Lab Science AG and TECHNOPARK® Zürich, and then (~18 min in) about his book "The Quest for a Universal Theory of Intelligence: The Mind, The Machine, and Singularity Hypotheses".

Dr. Christian Hugo Hoffmann's book proposes a universal theory of intelligence which is based on causal learning as the central theme of intelligence. The goal is not just to describe, but mainly to explain queries like why one kind of intelligence is more intelligent than another, whatsoever the intelligence. Shiny terms like "strong AI," "superintelligence," "singularity" or "artificial general intelligence" that have been coined by a Babylonian confusion of tongues are clarified on the way.

Learn more about Christian on his personal website and on his LinkedIn.

Radical futurist, tech critic, independent industry analyst, and interdisciplinary researcher Sara M. Watson and I discuss "A People's History of Technology" in this episode, which she co-founded and curates (with Emily Best). Recently featured at SXSW and Sundance, A People’s History of Tech is a collective storytelling project. Popular histories of technology often focus on lone inventors or technical innovations. A People's History of Tech wants to capture the full spectrum of the lived experience of technology.

We also speak about Sara's prior research at Oxford Internet Institute re: data privacy and social impacts of technology.

Additionally, I reference University of Cambridge Professor Caroline Bassett's "Anti-Computing".

You can learn more and submit your story to A People's History of Tech here, and you can keep up with Sara via her LinkedIn and website.

A People's History of Tech will also be at The Conference 2024 in Malmö, Sweden (27-28 August)!