Digital Disruption

00;00;02;00 - 00;00;04;20

ALEXANDER

this entire fear is about loss of income.

00;00;04;20 - 00;00;07;26

ALEXANDER

Because people have no imagination to look at life beyond money

00;00;07;29 - 00;00;10;07

ALEXANDER

We need to redesign everything from scratch.

00;00;10;13 - 00;00;15;23

ALEXANDER

because you have trying to adopt a completely revolutionary, transformative thing to an all the infrastructure.

00;00;15;25 - 00;00;18;02

ALEXANDER

just doesn't work.

00;00;18;04 - 00;00;45;05

GEOFF

This is a show about the future of tech and the future of work. I'm Jeff Nielsen, and today my guest is Alexander Manu. He's an innovation advisor. Strategic foresight practitioner, author and lecturer obsessed with disruption and how technology is changing our lives and ourselves. Alexander is unusually optimistic about AI and sees it as a tool less for efficiency gains, but for helping us become truer versions of ourselves.

00;00;45;07 - 00;01;00;16

GEOFF

He sees us as being at a historical bridge between technological eras. So I really want to know what he sees on the other side that I don't, and what we need to do to get ready. Let's find out.

00;01;00;19 - 00;01;17;25

GEOFF

Alexander, thanks so much for being here today. Really excited to have you. I wanted to start by just asking when I hear you talk about AI. The word that comes to mind is fearlessness. You have seem to have a fearlessness about the technology that feels, in some ways, out of step with a lot of the media narrative right now.

00;01;17;26 - 00;01;33;07

GEOFF

There's so much, you know, concern, there's so much backlash. And I don't hear those emotions when you talk about it. And so I'm curious, you know, why is that? What's your outlook and what do you see from your perspective that is not being picked up?

00;01;33;10 - 00;01;58;16

ALEXANDER

I think a lot of people react, when they discuss. I, react to something they don't really understand. And what they don't really understand is human nature. And human nature, seeks, like every other animal we seek, something that we never talk about, which is the lowest energy state, like we seek to balance, activity with non activity.

00;01;58;19 - 00;02;37;29

ALEXANDER

And for that purpose, we build tools, we build elevators, we build know cars. Right. So when people, discuss AI, we discuss that initially from a dystopian perspective because they don't understand the meaning of technology. They think technology has ideology. They think they know nology is a thing on itself. They never think of technology as an extension of us, of the human will, the human will to exist, the human will to to create, the human will to procreate, and so on, and to leave a to leave, a sign that we existed because that's the whole a whole thing about humanity.

00;02;38;01 - 00;03;02;25

ALEXANDER

This makes it different than other animals. So if you look at the this artificial intelligence conversation right now is very easy to be dystopian. There is a story in dystopia. There is no story in Utopia. There is no point in being positive about something when it can be negative, because fear is a very dominant emotion. It's a very easy to, to, to instill fear in people.

00;03;02;28 - 00;03;36;15

ALEXANDER

So, you know, you think of, I'm going to lose employment, I'm going to be displaced as a professional. I'm going to be increasingly replaced by invisible automation by machines and so on. But nobody thinks about okay, so at the end of all that replacement, what happens? Nobody thinks that maybe this is the purpose of humanity to actually the, work to be taken over by machines and you to have the power or the opportunity to finally contemplate that you exist and you may think, wow, what do you mean, contemplation?

00;03;36;17 - 00;03;54;09

ALEXANDER

Well, yeah, contemplation is what your life is about. That's why you build museums. You know what you do in a museum, you do nothing. And that's the low energy state. You know what you do when you do nothing. You look at the Mona Lisa and you are in a conversation across time, a time zones. You're in a different place.

00;03;54;09 - 00;04;17;16

ALEXANDER

You are being human. You are not an engineer. You are not a doctor. You're not a lawyer. You are a human being in front of the Mona Lisa. And that is what people don't understand. That we created is layers, layers, layers of societal, expertise. After industrialization, because we need people to make machines, people to work for machines, people to manage the machines and the people.

00;04;17;16 - 00;04;40;08

ALEXANDER

People to manage the systems in which all of these things existed. And guess what? Now we have AI taking over everything. So all these layers we created for the last 200 years are disappearing. And people don't like that because they don't think of why they became they became engineers in the first place. They became engineers because the layers existed.

00;04;40;11 - 00;05;05;02

ALEXANDER

Once the layers become, I know, compressed or replaced by something that they will not exist. And that's very, very hard for people to understand because they identify themselves with their profession and that is their mistake. They don't identify themselves with anything else, by the professional thing. And then they have a hard time retiring. And then when they retire, they seek meaning some other way.

00;05;05;04 - 00;05;23;22

ALEXANDER

And that is, you know, playing golf, traveling and so on. So they become this child that they started being initially and this state of not doing nothing but understanding a life from the perspective of leaving it, not working at it.

00;05;23;25 - 00;05;50;25

GEOFF

So I it's a really interesting perspective and it's really interesting to me because it actually in some ways tells the same narrative that we've heard about. Yes, there will be this transformation. Yes, we will see AI and technology, you know, have this massive disruptive, impact on automation. But you see that as ultimately taking us to a happier place versus, you know, a sadder place or a place of worry.

00;05;50;27 - 00;06;13;10

GEOFF

And so I'm curious when you play the clock forward, what does that look like? And, you know, how do we you said something really interesting there, which is that technology is here to work for us. And I hear this fear that it's almost, it's working instead of us or in a way that prevents us from having any sort of livelihood.

00;06;13;12 - 00;06;13;24

GEOFF

So. So

00;06;13;26 - 00;06;26;04

GEOFF

do we cross that chasm? And and, you know, how do you give people hope that, you know, they'll still be able to, you know, have, productive, fruitful, you know, life where they

00;06;26;07 - 00;06;32;09

GEOFF

pursue, I guess, opportunity and, like wealth in the broadest sense of the word.

00;06;32;09 - 00;06;42;19

ALEXANDER

okay, so let's start with some physical, physical, exercises. Okay. Try to screw a screw without a screwdriver.

00;06;42;22 - 00;07;16;26

ALEXANDER

Just try it. Just see what happens. See your finger. So then you realize that we create tools for very specific purposes. And we understand their place in our life because of the way to send the purpose for which they were created. Artificial intelligence is different than that. Because it didn't come into our life as one of these purposeful technologies initially it did initially, you have to realize we had an enormous amount of AI, which was invisible automation in word processors, in email, in web platforms, in Photoshop for 25 years.

00;07;16;29 - 00;07;42;11

ALEXANDER

But it was stealth. We didn't know about it. So it wasn't replacing jobs, it was enhancing jobs. People were doing. Hey, look, I can remove this thing from Photoshop. I can do this in illustrator again. So it enhanced our workflow and we can do more things and nicer things and faster things. So now, AI comes in in this historical sequence of technologies, which transform civilizations.

00;07;42;11 - 00;08;07;06

ALEXANDER

Right. And this is nothing new. Lewis Mumford wrote a phenomenal book called Tools and Civilization, which tracks exactly the same history we become the tools we use. We are the innovation, not the tool, the innovation, the innovation is not a process. Innovation is an outcome. Design is the process by which we design things and make things. And then the outcome is us now on the cellphone.

00;08;07;06 - 00;08;37;10

ALEXANDER

Well guess what? That's innovation. My mobility is innovation, not the tool itself. The tool allows me to behave in a different way. So artificial intelligence shows up in this historical sequence of stuff, but it's a different order of abstraction because it doesn't automate physical labor. It starts to automate cognition. And that's a different level, right? Coordination, prediction of installation, that's look at all of these other things that starts to unify them invisibly.

00;08;37;13 - 00;09;02;27

ALEXANDER

And now you wonder, so what role do I play. The human being. Well now you can start creating things which artificial intelligence cannot create. Now you can start collaborating with a very powerful collaborator. That's how I use it. In image generation, I don't treat it as a tool. I is something that I can, coordinate, I can collaborate with, I can, give intent to.

00;09;02;29 - 00;09;27;10

ALEXANDER

And I can give it articulation, but I don't, and I am expecting a manifestation which is beyond what I could do myself. And once I see that manifestation in the form of generated images, I'm blown away and I realize the power of what just happened. So now imagine that's future, right? So we have an ambient environmental, situation where the AI is ambient.

00;09;27;13 - 00;09;54;23

ALEXANDER

It's not identifiable. So guess what's going to happen? Bills are paid, lists are made. Supply chains are taking care of, roots are changed, medical signals are monitored, and so forth. And now the task is no longer performed by you know. So again, what do I do? What do you think your life was means? The meaning of your life is the tasks that you perform.

00;09;54;25 - 00;10;17;20

ALEXANDER

That's when you feel alive. When you feel alive, when you listen to music. Is music something that is physically draining of the body? No. Music is something we do. And actually all of us. And the sense idea that while we listen to music, we do nothing right, like we do nothing physiologically, physically right. But our brain does an enormous amount of things.

00;10;17;22 - 00;10;34;21

ALEXANDER

Our brain connects dots that we normally will not connect if we did not listen to music. And now you may think, well, that's what that got to do with I well, I will allow you to do more of that. And then you say, okay, but what's going to happen to my money in the end? This is what this is about.

00;10;34;28 - 00;11;03;12

ALEXANDER

Unfortunately, in the end, this entire fear is about loss of income. Why? Because people have no imagination to look at life beyond money or think of life as life. Okay, so here's a thing that I do with my students all the time. Imagine that just is a game. Imagine a world in which tomorrow there is no money. Just imagine it and then imagine what's going to happen.

00;11;03;15 - 00;11;24;19

ALEXANDER

What do you think is going to happen? Do you think anything will change? Well, nothing will change because bread is made with flour and water and it's not money. And you may say by the the make wants to get paid. No, he wants to get paid because he has other bills to pay. But if we remove this entire thing, you know who does this very well?

00;11;24;21 - 00;11;57;03

ALEXANDER

Nature. Nature just does things and nobody gets paid. And we are not able to understand that. We come from that place in which we had exchange mechanisms that don't involve money, and we have to be imaginative enough to come up with a society now with AI, in which money will not exist. And then we have a different conversation right now, unfortunately, the conversation takes a layer of civilization, which is now surpassed by a layer of technology, and they're trying to combine them.

00;11;57;05 - 00;12;08;19

ALEXANDER

And it's just not possible because you have trying to adopt a completely revolutionary, transformative thing to an all the infrastructure. And that just doesn't work.

00;12;08;21 - 00;12;35;16

GEOFF

If you don't work in enterprise technology, you can skip ahead or take a quick brain-cation. But if you do, Infotech is your secret weapon. Infotech helps IT teams get projects done faster, better, and at a lower cost. Whether you're rolling out new tech, improving processes, or just looking for cost savings. Infotech provides unlimited access to practical tools and expert guidance you need to execute at a fraction of the cost of traditional consulting.

00;12;35;18 - 00;12;47;16

GEOFF

No matter the project, from AI strategy to cybersecurity to vendor negotiation, Infotech has you covered. Check it out at the link below, and don't forget to like and subscribe!

00;12;47;19 - 00;13;07;12

GEOFF

let's dig into that a little bit more because I think, you know, to your point that there's the image of the utopia is really starting to take shape around what people could be if we leave, you know, toil and work in sort of the, you know, continuation of the Industrial revolution, sense of work continues.

00;13;07;12 - 00;13;40;25

GEOFF

And if we can if we can leave that behind, being able to move to something a lot better. I guess the question for me is, is what does that transition look like? Because I think that is where there's a lot of fear. And how do we make sure we get that future that we want. And you know, architect that versus fall prey to some sort of manipulation by, you know, the owners of production, the owners of, of AI and the people who have all this capital and say, well, you know, why would I give this up?

00;13;41;01 - 00;13;47;21

GEOFF

It's allowing me this privilege that I could lose.

00;13;47;24 - 00;14;03;11

ALEXANDER

This is a this is a historical bridge right now. So we have a bridge in which we need to take a transformational technology. And instead of trying to adapt ourselves to it, which is the first mistake we try to we make, we try to adapt.

00;14;03;15 - 00;14;06;19

ALEXANDER

We need to redesign everything from scratch.

00;14;06;21 - 00;14;19;00

ALEXANDER

So right now, to give you a very good example of how you can do things, transformative in the deepest possible level without changing the infrastructure.

00;14;19;03 - 00;14;48;23

ALEXANDER

I just returned from Copenhagen. Which has the most amazing subway system. Most amazing. Because it's the deepest. It's 40m underground. You can't believe how deep that is. And why is there? Because they dug it without changing anything on the surface. They didn't have to disturb anything in the streets. In Toronto, when we built the subway, the street is blocked for ten, ten years because it's the nine, nine meters underground.

00;14;48;25 - 00;15;12;21

ALEXANDER

So the thing is, we are trying right now, to do an impossible things, which is to adopt a technology which is revolutionary and not designed for what we have to what we have. We did this all with everything. We, had the gears, on our, mechanical devices. And then we had electricity, and then we created the electric motor.

00;15;12;23 - 00;15;31;08

ALEXANDER

So then we put electric motor on everything that have gears, you can say very, very easy to understand. What is the purpose of this thing? I have already this thing I can make the egg beater now, of elec electric, and I can use my hand to point to things so I can press one button. The egg gets, the white gets fluffy.

00;15;31;11 - 00;15;51;26

ALEXANDER

But you know what the interesting part about taking that and adapting it to this? The egg doesn't know. In other words, you have not changed the ultimate outcome. In other words, the benefit is the same. I just do it. Conserving my energy. So now we have AI coming in and we are trying to do the exact same thing with AI.

00;15;51;26 - 00;16;12;13

ALEXANDER

We are treating it as an answer to a problem or a solution to a problem. Why? Because we are in this problem solution framework. The problem solution framework is very easy because you have a thing. We have a nail, we have a hammer. So the hammer. Hammer is a nail. We got a solution. Everything is clear. I can ask a question.

00;16;12;15 - 00;16;37;19

ALEXANDER

And the question is, what do you want to become? What? What do you truly want to do? And this is what I get to the the real fear, right is not working less. It's a displacement of identity because people and I will say 99.9% of the people I ever met in my life, in academia, never read Abraham Maslow.

00;16;37;21 - 00;17;06;20

ALEXANDER

And everybody uses the word Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which doesn't exist because his goals, he talked about goals, and everybody talks about self-actualization as being the pinnacle, when actually it's not transcending. Self is the pinnacle. Self-actualization is the worst thing you are doing because you are actually becoming exactly what society wants you to become. To becoming a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, actualizing the self, not you.

00;17;06;23 - 00;17;28;21

ALEXANDER

The self is not you. The surface, the construction, the surface, the reaction of your organism, an environment. That's Carl Rogers self theory. So we don't understand fundamentally what human purpose is about in what human, self is about, what the ego is about. And we think the whole thing is to satisfy this societal thing that calls us an engineer.

00;17;28;21 - 00;17;58;10

ALEXANDER

That's the meaning of life. So when this thing is being displaced by the energy, of course, we fear everything because we say, what's my purpose? Where's my identity going? Right? So the fear is that you will be forced to discover who you are outside that professional thing, and you are not. You might not be pleased with the image you fight, because you might discover that you busy yourself all your life to become the self, and you ignore the you.

00;17;58;12 - 00;18;27;19

ALEXANDER

You ignore that humanity that needs to transcend the self eventually will transcend itself. So if I'm looking at purely from a, Maslow Vienna perspective, let's say. Right, which theory that the Maslow has this idea of transcending self. This is the ultimate goal when we start to mean things for others, when you start to create for others, when you start to actually know, you remove unnecessary labor because I takes care of that.

00;18;27;22 - 00;18;50;08

ALEXANDER

And now you have more time for creativity from learning, from unlearning and civic participation, all that kind of stuff. You don't even think about those as replacements for your job, but they are and they are pleasurable activities. And there are things that you can do, and they are not utopian in any way, because you do them right now, and you will eventually do them when you retire because you seek to do that.

00;18;50;08 - 00;19;07;01

ALEXANDER

You know, when you retire because you need an activity, right and meaning right. So, so this idea that fulfillment rests in self-actualization is wrong. Once we understand it, it's not the transcending that is the power. Then you realize how I can help you do it.

00;19;07;03 - 00;19;31;29

GEOFF

I'm understanding correctly. It seems like for you and the way we break through a lot of this negativity is really looking at AI as a tool for for me, right? What is this for me? What does it unlock for me? How do I take advantage of it and how do I use it? With an internal locus of control that I control, I this is my tool.

00;19;32;00 - 00;19;39;01

GEOFF

It's not being imposed on me. Work isn't being taken away from me by someone else. I am using a tool.

00;19;39;04 - 00;20;01;27

ALEXANDER

I can now do joyful work. Yeah. So the so the profound possibility is not it will simply you become more productive in a joyful kind of way, but it will become it will help you, become less trapped by productivity. And as a measure of your existence. And that will give you more time to create, more time to actually dream about things that you never bring before.

00;20;02;00 - 00;20;25;25

ALEXANDER

And that is not something people internalize it as a benefit because they never experience it in their life, right? They never express, hey, I can now do a lot more in my life because, you know, why can't I do more? Because I the things I've been thinking over biotechnology that you don't even need to touch. Right. So I'm, I'm, I can say I'm positive.

00;20;25;27 - 00;20;32;27

ALEXANDER

I think it's normal. I was never negative around any technology. I had this book launch

00;20;33;00 - 00;20;49;19

ALEXANDER

when I was mentioning where I come from. In terms of emotional connection to technology, I designed the 1982, one of the first portable computers, introduced in Menlo Park in 83, in California, the Pied Piper and I started my my book.

00;20;49;19 - 00;21;06;21

ALEXANDER

What? One of my books with the story. I asked the, the guy selling the computer in the store, is there a market for this? And like I said, absolutely not. And then I said, do you have, do you think there's a user base because, you know, you may not have a market, but you may have some users in a basement somewhere, the Homebrew Club.

00;21;06;23 - 00;21;32;12

ALEXANDER

And the guy said, absolutely not. So then I'm thinking, okay, so what what are we doing here? Like, why are we designing these machines? So then you realize we have designed platforms for which people's designed behaviors. The reasons we started using these machines is to change our to change our behaviors software. So the so somebody linear to invent the reason we will need these machines.

00;21;32;15 - 00;21;54;25

ALEXANDER

So then you realize wow that's happened in my life repeatedly about nine times I transformed my life because of a technology. We are the product, the extensions of all the technologies that happened in the last 40 years. Right now, in this conversation, because all the technologies are on my table, on your table, in between us and so on.

00;21;54;27 - 00;22;27;09

ALEXANDER

So you cannot be negative about technology when technology is everything that is around you right now is everything we created has a second nature. Even if we call it a chair, it's still a technology. It's a technology for even ideas are technologies. Right. So all of this stuff is who we are. And our meaning is to keep creating these things to help us move further and further into our, you know, transcending the moments we seek to build all of this stuff, just not to do it.

00;22;27;15 - 00;22;34;05

ALEXANDER

And in the end to to contemplate you look what I have. Look what I have done. Look at my journey so far. That's a very human thing.

00;22;34;08 - 00;22;45;10

GEOFF

there's still a tension there that I want to get a little bit deeper. And which is, you know, you described it as there's the you that transcends the self and is really all about

00;22;45;16 - 00;22;53;09

GEOFF

what is going to work for you. It's not the self that reflects other people's or other people's wants or desires or who you should be.

00;22;53;17 - 00;23;18;06

GEOFF

It's truly connected to something deeper that you may not even know. You know about about yourself as a person. And technology to me could be used for both, right? It can be pushed on you by others who say, use this. You know, here is a personal computer to put on your desk at work with spreadsheets, and you're going to have email and you're going to be more efficient and

00;23;18;10 - 00;23;19;17

ALEXANDER

what happened. That's exactly

00;23;19;17 - 00;23;21;23

GEOFF

that's exactly that's right.

00;23;21;25 - 00;23;24;10

GEOFF

So how do we how do we overcome that?

00;23;24;12 - 00;23;45;25

ALEXANDER

Well but this is what happened in our lives. All of a sudden every office had computers whereas every office did not have computers prior to 1982 like the PC, the IBM PC was this introduced in 1981. And all of a sudden by 84, it's on everybody's desk. And then we have, noise canceling, sound systems because was very noisy.

00;23;46;03 - 00;24;14;24

ALEXANDER

And then we have this drives, then we have, scanners, then we have the storage media, then we have, business depot staplers. Now, which is a half of that was, storage media. So c d drive CDs and so on and all the initially floppy disks. So all of this stuff is imposed on you. And all of a sudden people that went to engineering school now have to create decks for PowerPoint decks.

00;24;14;24 - 00;24;39;24

ALEXANDER

They what is a deck? But the first actually program was called persuasion not PowerPoint. So persuasion. So all of a suddenly as we make slides, it's like it's actually a demand from everybody to, above you that you need to know these things even though you never studied them. But you know what? We adapted it to all of it in a process called, from gizmo to tool.

00;24;39;27 - 00;24;59;24

ALEXANDER

So the first thing we do, we call in gizmos, because in the moment we call them a gizmo. It's something we play with. It's something non-serious. It's something that, hey, my wife just called and she says, what are you doing? And I'm saying I'm playing on my computer, right? Like, yeah, you see exactly this activity. I'm playing on my computer where I'm playing with my phone.

00;24;59;26 - 00;25;20;16

ALEXANDER

So gizmos are introduced. They call themselves gizmos because it's a new thing. The early adopters calls in the future. And then there you play. The more you play, the more you adopt it. And initially people say, whoa, what's the difference between the BlackBerry and the iPhone? The the iPhone is a toy. No, but it there's not a serious thing.

00;25;20;19 - 00;25;49;10

ALEXANDER

Well, that's exactly why it was the most successful product of all time. Because it is a toy. It was a toy. It allows you to discover everything. Right? So then you realize we adapt to these technologies. And one of the most powerful ideas in my mind that I discovered writing this, my last book, was this idea that once we adopt a technology, we also embrace its future because from that moment, we are it.

00;25;49;13 - 00;26;20;21

ALEXANDER

From that moment, we cannot go back. We cannot pretend we didn't use this tool or this technology. We cannot pretend this doesn't exist. So then we become completely co-opted into that ecosystem. And you cannot you cannot get out. And then slowly and in my view, because of that, the earlier you, embrace the technology, the more connected to it you will become more and more fluent, you will become and your life will be a much easier flow.

00;26;20;23 - 00;26;48;19

ALEXANDER

Between these technologies and, between the adoption of technologies, your redesign of the self. Don't forget, all of these technologies are architectures of so-called selfhood. You are the one being transformed. The thing doesn't do anything without you. The thing doesn't exist without you. That's the most interesting part. People say, well, Midjourney, Midjourney doesn't do anything. If I don't ask you to do something or try GPT.

00;26;48;21 - 00;27;06;09

GEOFF

So it's it's interesting though, right. Because we've got this history where it's connected to the self. It's an extension of the self. We suddenly become invested in it. You talk about the technology though, is in some ways co-opting us into its ecosystem. So it feels like there's something mutual happening here.

00;27;06;12 - 00;27;06;26

ALEXANDER

right now

00;27;06;28 - 00;27;07;09

GEOFF

Right.

00;27;07;11 - 00;27;25;16

ALEXANDER

technologies since machine learning that they told you learned a about a lot about yourself. So I'm convinced that, your iPhone and my iPhone do not look at all like, the same product when you open it, because we adapted to ourselves. I've convinced your GPT DBS completely differently than mine.

00;27;25;19 - 00;27;50;15

ALEXANDER

Because he learns from me who I am. It learns from you who you are. Whereas before very few technologies learned about you. Very. You think, oh, you said, good morning, Alexander. What can I do now for you now very few. But now we have Alexa. Now we have other things. I can mention the thing on my desk. He's going to talk back to me if I say anything.

00;27;50;18 - 00;28;02;05

ALEXANDER

all this assistance, right? And we use them without even blinking an eye. And we never understand how powerful this idea is of Alexa play Santana. You know what that means?

00;28;02;08 - 00;28;12;15

ALEXANDER

I didn't count how many, behavior moments need to happen. The from the desire to play Santana and the playing of Santana on a CD player.

00;28;12;18 - 00;28;38;21

ALEXANDER

There are 18, behavior moments and they involve cognition, muscle memory, orientation, spatial orientation, fine motor skills, gross motor skill. Because you have to open the thing, take the key out, close the thing, press the button. Like, do you realize how many things you are consuming for a no purpose whatsoever? Now, there was none of this. Things have a benefit value analysis which works in your favor.

00;28;38;24 - 00;28;57;27

ALEXANDER

All of it consume your life. All of this stuff. So now extend that 18 behavior, sequence to your other life at work in the market, making food, whatever. And you realize that we created tools that are wasting your neurons.

00;28;57;29 - 00;29;24;07

ALEXANDER

You know, sequence of behaviors, which in itself has no value. Because what you want, you want, Alexa, play Santana. You want you want Santana, you want, you want not the sequence. You want the end result. Same thing with vacuuming your floor. You were vacuuming, not the vacuum cleaner. The verb vacuuming applies to the human. The vacuum cleaners sucks the dust, and now it does.

00;29;24;07 - 00;29;32;23

ALEXANDER

It automatically. And I don't even have to be in the room. Well, isn't that extraordinary? Isn't that what we always wanted? Technology to take care of? Stuff?

00;29;32;26 - 00;30;03;16

ALEXANDER

So I'm not sure exactly, if this conversation, why this conversation doesn't take place at the level of the this is start actually, in high school, they should train people how to embrace technology, in the earliest possible moments of their life when actually, they are very susceptible to being, early adopters, which most kids are. But then you have an attitude towards technology which is positive, and that becomes a normative thing in every school.

00;30;03;16 - 00;30;19;11

ALEXANDER

And imagine that society that embraces technology. I believe there are countries that do that right now. You know, I believe China has an attitude towards industrialization and building and so on, completely different than, than we have in here.

00;30;19;13 - 00;30;44;17

GEOFF

It's funny how much of it comes back to the change. And having this behavioral change and this new technology be the part that is tough on people versus actually use it, you know, the actual experience of using it. And when you were talking about, you know, playing music and the image that came to mind is, you know, I have a four year old daughter and she says, Play Taylor Swift out loud and there is music playing.

00;30;44;24 - 00;31;07;11

GEOFF

And I, you know, as someone much older, I have my silly little record player that I like with my records and it plays it just so because it captures some sort of nostalgia. And I remember how things used to be, and I like that. Now, of course, I still, you know, play music from my phone, but when I reflect on it, it's hard for me to believe she would ever want a record player because

00;31;07;14 - 00;31;09;18

GEOFF

she doesn't have anything to attach it to

00;31;09;18 - 00;31;10;09

GEOFF

mentally.

00;31;10;09 - 00;31;12;22

GEOFF

She just knows it. Why would you make it hard?

00;31;12;25 - 00;31;33;10

ALEXANDER

Right. And she will never understand why you put such a value on the record player. In other words, what makes you so connected to it? And what does it mean? So much to you? Because for her, it has no value. The ultimate outcome is playing music. It happens that Alexa does it much better than Alexa in other devices.

00;31;33;10 - 00;31;36;22

ALEXANDER

Obviously you know Sonos. Yeah.

00;31;36;24 - 00;31;44;03

GEOFF

No. Exactly. I want to shift gears a little bit and I want to talk about disruption itself, which has been a theme that we've been covering so far.

00;31;44;07 - 00;31;51;14

GEOFF

you've been talking and writing recently on the disruption continuum as kind of a framework for understanding disruption.

00;31;51;22 - 00;31;58;28

GEOFF

Can you maybe walk me through what, what that means? And, you know, how should we be thinking about disruption through that lens?

00;31;59;01 - 00;32;22;24

ALEXANDER

So I wrote a couple of books on disruption in general, disruptive business and, future proofing and so on. And then I realized at one point that, it through client work, that you do this digital transformation seminars and workshops and so on, and you take companies from physical to digital. And once they are digital, they think it's over.

00;32;22;27 - 00;32;49;03

ALEXANDER

Okay, I was disrupted. Now I'm ready. And then I realized the disruption is never ready. In other words, disruption is never finished. Why? Because one thing leads to another, another, another, another. So he's never finished conceptually on a map. We have to finish the map somewhere. So if I do my mapping, which is, the innovation is here, the innovation object, then it maximizes, it amplifies the gap.

00;32;49;03 - 00;33;14;29

ALEXANDER

So all of these things become, maximization. And they stop at one point because of a physical impossibility of measuring everything, but it doesn't actually stop. It continues. So everything leads to everything else, because once the innovation object exists, it prompts you to innovate around it, so you innovate around it. Now you have right now the innovation object of the moment is a genetic design.

00;33;15;01 - 00;33;37;08

ALEXANDER

So now we are innovating a genetic like ad agents. We are trying to innovate agents because we can. So anytime we make a technology, easy to understand, easy to adopt and completely, accessible to everybody because not everybody is a computer. So there are moments in which, that we call the end of the beginning, like, now we have internet.

00;33;37;10 - 00;34;10;05

ALEXANDER

Phenomenal. What do we do? We come up with web 2.0, which means blogging or phenomenon. Now we are blogging. What do we do? Well, let's come up with YouTube images, video and so forth and and all of this stuff in innovation itself. So then you realize, if I start mapping human civilization from the most important innovation object, according to many, the printing press, we are the descendants of the result, the extent of the printing press which led to any number of things which I.

00;34;10;08 - 00;34;43;17

ALEXANDER

If you don't know my books in a in the book you mention, so then you realize that disruption never, never, never stops because destruction is the, the verb that happens when something a disruptor exists. The disruptor is an inside or outside inside, meaning a technology which we innovate or an event Covid COVID-19 outside in, digital transformation inside out, like, the transistor is a is a device right?

00;34;43;19 - 00;35;04;15

ALEXANDER

So then we, we come up with the transistor and then we have to find the uses for the transistor. The first uses are the immediacy or for which the transmitter was the transistor was invented. And then we try to apply that transistor to every single thing we make. Same thing with digital stuff. Same thing with LC. These same thing with, multiple touch screens and so forth.

00;35;04;18 - 00;35;27;05

ALEXANDER

So then you realize each one of these things I'm mentioning is a disruption creates a disrupt. The disruption is behavior, right. The disrupt tour is a technology. The disruption is behavior. So do we like our behavior being transformed? Yes. Because it's always adding something to something else which which means you become a compound. All of these things.

00;35;27;08 - 00;35;40;05

ALEXANDER

Now we can do more, and eventually you will have to unlearn, some, some of the stuff that doesn't exist anymore. You have to unlearn the facts. You have a fax machine.

00;35;40;07 - 00;35;45;15

GEOFF

I, I have never had a fax machine. I've used a fax machine. I've never owned a fax machine. Yeah.

00;35;45;17 - 00;36;08;09

ALEXANDER

so that's what. So you see what I mean? The fax was clearly an example of a bridge technology between a state and a new state. Email. So then you realize, well, this happens every day with every technology might be a bridge. So the question is to what? So that's what foresight practitioners do. They figure out when this thing is being maximized.

00;36;08;09 - 00;36;30;09

ALEXANDER

What is the thing is be maximized into. Because if I'm if right now you can say Alexa, play Santana, what else would you ask Alexa to do? Wouldn't be normal to ask Alexa to do a lot of other things or a technology similar to Alexa. Yeah, because you start to get trained to the benefit of saying, Alexa, do this, Alexa, what's the temperature or whatever?

00;36;30;13 - 00;36;55;04

ALEXANDER

And then you start realizing, why can't this happen in other aspects of my life? Wouldn't that be wonderful? So then you start seeking these moments, so you become, a disruptor as a human being because you are looking you are seeking other disruptors to create a disruption. So what people don't really see clearly is a disruption is a multi, layered phenomenon.

00;36;55;07 - 00;36;58;22

ALEXANDER

It's multilayered, multifaceted, and it's always cultural.

00;36;58;25 - 00;37;21;16

ALEXANDER

Technologies don't exist outside cultures. So technologies completely transform societies, but they transform the cultural fabric of society. What is what do I mean by that? What we do, what we create, how we create, what we look at, why we look at things. So people think that, technology changes the what they change.

00;37;21;19 - 00;37;47;17

ALEXANDER

So the how. Yeah, technology changes the how, how we shop, but also it changes the what what we shop for because now we shop for completely different things than I was shopping before. Why? I'm where I am today informed. I didn't even know this thing existed until I see them on Amazon. Certain things. Then if I see them and they make sense to my life, I want them.

00;37;47;19 - 00;38;13;22

ALEXANDER

And then you realize, why would I go and buy coffee when I get subscribed to coffee? Why would I go buy certain things like and subscribe to a lot of things? And then your life becomes much easier to manage because you realize what the point is. The point is not shopping, shopping. It's, I compare it with the, prime time for me is, hunting without gathering.

00;38;13;24 - 00;38;26;05

ALEXANDER

So I'm hunting without gathering. Like I'm hunting from home. That's it. That's the consensually nature, which is really cool. I hunting from my balcony. That's the.

00;38;26;07 - 00;38;43;24

ALEXANDER

that's when disruption activates other disruptors. Because once you change the mentality of people, they start seeking a different level of experience. So it's that level of experience needs a new level of technology. So you move from VR to AR and so forth, and then you realize we need all of these things.

00;38;43;27 - 00;39;08;02

ALEXANDER

And then we initially, apply all the technologies to everything that we have, and then we start inventing, native things for the technology. Like we first adapt games to the iPhone. We have Pacman or, and Miss Pacman, you probably don't even remember these games. And then we create Angry Birds, which is native to the iPhone. Or we create Fruit Ninja.

00;39;08;05 - 00;39;32;08

ALEXANDER

That's a better example because Fruit Ninja took advantage of this multi-touch screen over the phone. And that is exactly what needs to happen with AI right now. We did we do not have yet, a native I think, like we have, large language models. We have large action models. They are doable with AI, but they are not native.

00;39;32;08 - 00;39;45;12

ALEXANDER

In other words, they are not things they are replacing what we did before, we still have to come up with right now an AI native app. I don't know if that makes sense. Hopefully

00;39;45;16 - 00;40;06;24

GEOFF

It does, it does. But I kind of get the impression when you talk about bridges that we're in a bridge, period, and we don't really know where we're bridging to. Or at least it seems like a lot of the people trying to innovate don't know where we're bridging to that we're having these transformations, but we don't quite know what we're transforming into or what comes next.

00;40;06;25 - 00;40;10;00

GEOFF

Is that fairer? Would you categorize that differently?

00;40;10;03 - 00;40;17;10

ALEXANDER

fair because the people that create these things are never the people who should think about what they are being used for because they are

00;40;17;14 - 00;40;17;29

GEOFF

Right.

00;40;18;02 - 00;40;30;06

ALEXANDER

or they are technologists. What I know and what you know from your life, you know that at this moment you might be the best version of yourself. I hope you are.

00;40;30;09 - 00;41;00;25

ALEXANDER

I am the best version of myself right now. And I always, try and send this version. And this is exactly my purpose in life to transcend my latest achievement. And that's what transgenders do. Transgender is what they forget about the last book, and they move to the next book. And the thing is, I know that I have done everything that I have become because of technology, because of my, my, my life at the edge of, the soft edge of behavior and technology.

00;41;01;00 - 00;41;23;01

ALEXANDER

In other words, I embrace it before it hardens and before everybody knows about it. It doesn't make any sense when I embrace it, but it starts to transform me. And that's how we become what we are. And we became, a podcaster because of these technologies. So that that show you are hopefully the best version of yourself as well.

00;41;23;03 - 00;41;25;05

ALEXANDER

Do you feel that

00;41;25;08 - 00;41;50;14

GEOFF

Know. Sure, sure. I'm. Yeah. No it's yeah. It's something I'm working on. So I'm, I'm curious though because when you say Alexander that this is what you're doing, I believe you I, I do you've, you've kind of internalized this posture toward technology that feels, you know, very healthy and very, you know, almost, almost Zen. And I'm thinking more about organizations, about clients of yours that tell you, oh, we're doing a digital transformation.

00;41;50;20 - 00;42;06;00

GEOFF

Oh, we're adopting AI. What are they doing it right, in your view? Or what are they getting wrong? What do they need to be considering as they're trying to manage disruption and innovation?

00;42;06;03 - 00;42;09;06

ALEXANDER

Interesting. So there are two types of organizations

00;42;09;09 - 00;42;38;09

ALEXANDER

I'm running for my clients in the last four years. I can mention the domains, but I cannot mention the name of the client. But one was in the, high performance apparel. Let's put it this way. Completely missed the opportunity of transforming, because they didn't understand how this technology or fix them in any way except for the inventory management and, you know, logistics support and so on.

00;42;38;12 - 00;42;58;13

ALEXANDER

So they looked at it, and the technology is an efficiency engine. And most people do this most people look at technology as efficiency, but not as effectiveness. So they're not looking at, how can I make this taste better? They're looking at how can I rationalize the portion size so I make more money? How can I take three olives out of the olive?

00;42;58;13 - 00;43;34;14

ALEXANDER

Can or how do I cut this pizza? Or how do I cut the turkey? Actually, there's a real case for the cutting of the turkey. But so they look at it, efficiency but not effectiveness. Effectiveness is what the thing is made for, how good it is. So, that company did not see it. They actually felt threatened by the conversation around it, because they didn't see if you don't see it applied to the end product, you sell, but you see it applied with your two operations, then you don't find, value.

00;43;34;17 - 00;43;57;01

ALEXANDER

You find value because you save money or the operation side, but they don't find value in terms of marketing, announcing it, promoting it, allowing it to transform you, your deliverable. And that is a mistake because in that moment, you are not front face. You're not facing your market with a transformation. You are facing inwards with a transformation that may improve your bottom line.

00;43;57;01 - 00;44;21;15

ALEXANDER

But it doesn't change anything for the consumer, which is a mistake. If I look at other institutions, another one was the transportation company. I can mention the means of transportation because because of obvious, against threatened, didn't see how it could introduce anything. Didn't see how they can use it in marketing, but in operations.

00;44;21;15 - 00;44;52;28

ALEXANDER

Yes. So they are looking for the replacement theory. They're looking for the easy, the lowest hanging fruit. Where can I save some money by introducing this thing? So they are looking at, It's a very, very poor use of the, the, the gigantic potential of this technology. Like, this is, I think, conversation with Judge Beatty every day. And it's a real conversation because he understands my methodology, my formula for completion of futures and so on.

00;44;53;01 - 00;45;16;16

ALEXANDER

And he creates a variables based on what I give as an input, which are phenomenal, but consistent with my thinking and clearly, you know, with my we have my insight to think would not exist. And I know that and it knows that. So then we have another kind of client in education, for example, who is trying desperately to fit AI.

00;45;16;18 - 00;45;40;23

ALEXANDER

So most companies want to fit the thing to what they have. They don't want to create something from it. So that's the big difference right there. Happens all the time. You want to fit innovation to business. Business instead of fitting business innovation. So these are very incompatible things. You create a Bluetooth and you want to introduce it to something.

00;45;40;25 - 00;46;10;23

ALEXANDER

But you are not creating a Bluetooth business, which is where the business actually is. So that even with the crazy Bluetooth, what was the purpose? Luggage tags. They did not think beyond luggage tags, and the headset did not even enter their mind because those made for luggage by once people understood, the Bluetooth as a business innovation, they created businesses out of Bluetooth Java headsets or what a Jabra whatever the name was.

00;46;10;25 - 00;46;31;25

ALEXANDER

So the thing is same thing right now with I institutions. So I have this issue with education. I know that trying to introduce AI in education and clearly that will affect everything will change the structure. So the result is a compromise. Are not using the best of this technology and you're not using the best of what you have right now.

00;46;32;02 - 00;46;59;26

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Anytime you try to fit a new thing to an all different structure, you have a compromise. You take a, air conditioning, in a building that doesn't have a conditioning. You put these twin systems that look horrible overhang outside the window. It's worse than a compromise. But you have air conditioning, right? So. So a compromise version of the future is not that bad, but let's let's think of what can we do that's original and amazing.

00;46;59;29 - 00;47;21;26

ALEXANDER

So now, instead of installing a new thing into a system that cannot receive it because you have, digital tools into analog bureaucracies, that's what this does for a machine was exactly that introducing a, digital tool in an analog mindset. So the the mindset seal performed the task in an analog way.

00;47;21;28 - 00;47;48;17

ALEXANDER

Look at the example of, the subway system in Copenhagen. What if we introduce everything underneath what exists? So thick or above it? So take a look at a university set of trying to to compromise both the technology and your existing curriculum by combining them somehow create something on top of it, which is only that only I it teaches you everything about.

00;47;48;17 - 00;48;12;21

ALEXANDER

I create, a cognition mechanism here which discusses only AI and don't interfere with anything else. Don't try. Well, of course, optimize whatever you optimize at the existing level. Get rid of whatever is redundant at this level. And most things would be redundant. Right. So but introduce this at the top. It easy to do. You don't need to retool anybody.

00;48;12;21 - 00;48;37;25

ALEXANDER

You hire new people and you have a completely new offering. But very few people think this way because most people when presented with an idea that changes anything they are looking at. First of all, what happens to my job? It my part of this project and then they are looking at do we have this stop this capable the you know the comments typically you get our this is aspirational.

00;48;37;28 - 00;49;10;00

ALEXANDER

This is like an aspirational idea. Well guess what. Most great ideas are aspirational. And then you need people and we simply do not have the faculty to deliver this. What we hire the faculty to deliver these programs. All right. So anyway, so the the lesson here is not technical. It's it's it's conceptual. So the whole thing is this if the surface cannot be disrupted, which is the case of Copenhagen, then transformation requires a different layer of intelligence.

00;49;10;03 - 00;49;31;18

ALEXANDER

And that's what people are not ready to accept that there are other layers of intelligence. Pom pom pom pom pom at which organizations individuals need to operate, including in our own life. If I cannot do things daily with generative AI for my work, I'm going to do them as another layer of what I do. And that's what do you mean, another layer?

00;49;31;20 - 00;49;43;17

ALEXANDER

So you like that complicates everybody's existence if you add it, if you explain it like that. But that's how it is. You either replace everything you do or you go on top of it.

00;49;43;20 - 00;49;48;03

GEOFF

Right. And that's the one. That's the worst of both worlds. And so, you know.

00;49;48;05 - 00;50;07;12

ALEXANDER

The worst of both worlds is to try to adapt it and is now like my course now the AI. And then you have to put disclaimers what you can do, what you cannot do. Don't do this, don't do that. But in other words, you have to. You are what you are doing. You are changing the technology. You say, okay, conceptually, think of this.

00;50;07;12 - 00;50;31;02

ALEXANDER

You are chaining a new technology to an old course. Outline by telling people where they can use this grandiose thing and where they cannot use it. No, let their words tone it down, turn it off. Like, can you imagine something worse than that? Can you imagine if we did this, if we invented a cure for cancer and we say, no, no, no, no, no, no, we have a treatment here.

00;50;31;05 - 00;50;55;09

ALEXANDER

We have treatments. You here establish procedures. We have all sorts of layers. You have to go through this, this, this, this. And then we give you this, and this is the cure. So that's that's exactly like we still have, in, in art and design schools, people learning how to draw or drawing in design. I know thing about drawing in art, drawing in art is a form of expression, in design is a form of communication.

00;50;55;11 - 00;51;22;01

ALEXANDER

Communicating a form, not to yourself, to the client, not discovering the form accidentally. So now why would I need to sketch? Why do I need to do a render in marker? What? What is a marker? So if you look at this idea of, parallel systems in school, like imagine in a school, this top layer which is parallel, exists and it's a layer of advising, tutoring, research, support, creative development.

00;51;22;03 - 00;51;30;03

ALEXANDER

All the functions here being performed by the AI. No compromise, no rules, no nothing. There you go.

00;51;30;05 - 00;51;58;02

GEOFF

So, so there's in this new world, there's an awful lot that I can do that we used to do. And it sounds like the mindset we approach it with, the culture that we approach it with are really important and in some ways maybe more important than the technology itself. And so I guess looking at it that way, what what do you see as some of the most important things for, you know, business leaders to, to learn about it, to unlearn if they're going to actually take advantage of this.

00;51;58;04 - 00;52;19;19

ALEXANDER

The first thing, there's a lot of unlearning, obviously, but first the learning. The learning is, What? Where can we do this? Like I mentioned, we can go below this infrastructure. We can go above is interface. We can go around as a parallel service, which is very cool also. Or we can go within as an intelligence embedded into the process.

00;52;19;22 - 00;52;28;03

ALEXANDER

That is the hardest one because that you have to give up something else. So the first lesson they need to learn is that this is

00;52;28;04 - 00;52;50;10

ALEXANDER

not an elective. This is not just like the internet was not an elective. Just like the digital transformation was not an elective. And the quicker you jump on this, the faster you will learn there is not an elective and you will become of, way more capable as an individual to understand what needs to be done.

00;52;50;12 - 00;53;12;07

ALEXANDER

So you need to reach a point of no return as a leader. So as a leader. And this is a leadership function, right? The transformation is a leadership function. So the leader must understand that this is, point of no return at one point and embrace it fully and lead, into discovering what else can. So the question becomes, what else can we become?

00;53;12;07 - 00;53;39;08

ALEXANDER

Right? So now let's look at this phenomenal question that you can ask of any organization. And leading to a discovery of where can I use I let's go for the bank first. What else can a great bank be? So look at the phrasing of the question. Each one of them promotes a different conversation. What else? So what is a bank can a great back.

00;53;39;08 - 00;53;55;09

ALEXANDER

So what is a great bank. You have to define it. So the attributes that you define it has to be said. You can put and else are completely different than what a bank is. But you will say a great bank is trusted, reputable, this this safe.

00;53;55;11 - 00;54;03;00

ALEXANDER

And then what else can I bank? And, you know, if you accept asking a banker, what else can I bank?

00;54;03;02 - 00;54;27;02

ALEXANDER

Do you think they understand? You can bank DNA? Do you think that there's any can bank images, you can bank emotions. You can bank ya. Do you get it right? They will not think it like that, because the limitation of the word limits their vision of what the bank is. So the first thing that needs to happen is an unraveling of the DNA of any organization.

00;54;27;05 - 00;54;45;01

ALEXANDER

What is our DNA? What are we? What is a bank? What else can a bank be? What else can a great bank be? So what makes you great? What makes you a bank? What else can you be? So the what else is exactly the question. Hey, I came as

00;54;45;04 - 00;54;48;00

ALEXANDER

I came is the question what else can you be?

00;54;48;03 - 00;54;58;07

ALEXANDER

Since we know we are becoming what the tools allow us to become, that it we are extensions. We have products, we have all our behaviors and behavior becomes identity.

00;54;58;09 - 00;55;17;15

ALEXANDER

And this is if you don't accept the idea that behavior becomes identity, then you don't understand what technology did to your life. Right. So then yeah, which which means by by definition, in a contrasting condition, if you don't behave in a specific way, you don't have that identity.

00;55;17;17 - 00;55;36;20

ALEXANDER

So the problem, leaders need to surpass is mistrust nationality. So they need to stop looking at dystopian scenarios. They need to stop looking at the idea that this technology is, Terminator two is coming for us to go to destroy us.

00;55;36;23 - 00;55;43;13

ALEXANDER

we will not become the matrix. You know, even some people think that that we are in the matrix right now, but.

00;55;43;16 - 00;56;09;08

ALEXANDER

they need to understand that you cannot attach this technology just as a decoration like this has to be your your soul. That's what I meant, the DNA. So it's a very, very important time for organizations to reexamine who they are. So to, to to reexamine that. So imagine. So I'm working with a, I have a formula that I use for my no.

00;56;09;13 - 00;56;16;20

ALEXANDER

For size work. It was inspired by are you familiar with the Drake formula, the Drake equation?

00;56;16;23 - 00;56;19;09

GEOFF

For the Drake equation for extraterrestrial life.

00;56;19;12 - 00;56;34;28

ALEXANDER

Right. So I adapted that equation. I adapted the variables to foresight because that equation was not about it was about, I call it a grammar of possibility. Like the guy was trying to find a way to express what could be possible.

00;56;35;00 - 00;56;54;13

ALEXANDER

So he looked at a multiplication formula in which you need to have each one of these variables to exist had more than zero, right? It has to be one at least, so it multiplies. So then you realize that, hey, that's a very phenomenal formula for any future, any future that I want. This depends on a number of variables.

00;56;54;17 - 00;57;23;17

ALEXANDER

Now the variables in backing are different than the variables in podcasting and all of the variables in education. But the formula is the same. I'm just changing the variables, but the conceptual idea is the same. This equals that times this times this linear boom, or some of a sudden you have an a diagnostic tool for the future of an organization because you say you're conditioned, your future is conditioned on this things.

00;57;23;19 - 00;57;51;17

ALEXANDER

Well, do you see most businesses? I look at that conditionality between things. Do you think most businesses look at if this exists then that happens. So that's a conditional attention. So essentially what I'm trying to teach leaders right now is understand your conditional tensions in this variables, which is a one paragraph. Like it's not even a, it's not even a major thing to understand, right.

00;57;51;19 - 00;57;58;14

ALEXANDER

You are familiar with. Okay. So I'll give you an, I can't mention the name. Okay.

00;57;58;16 - 00;58;13;11

ALEXANDER

another podcast there. That's, I did actually a conditionality for, another podcast. And I knew I was about to read to you the, the conditional attention, but because that applies to you as well, just to understand the idea.

00;58;13;11 - 00;58;39;12

ALEXANDER

Right. So the idea is that, leaders in organizations need to sit down with intellectuals and which is happening very, very rarely. They should stop going watching Ted talks, because Ted talks give you the impression you are thinking these thoughts. Or do you think you are, that you are in the audience? And the fact that you get a 15 minute shot of adrenaline doesn't mean you are thinking anything.

00;58;39;15 - 00;59;07;11

ALEXANDER

But it's time to start thinking about things. And the thinking about things starts having people, having an intellectual conversation with factual basis, understanding self-transcendence as the ultimate thing, and the saying that humanity seeks something and that something is lowest energy state one. At the same time, we are curious about like a cat seeing a laser beam, right?

00;59;07;14 - 00;59;18;12

ALEXANDER

The cat is in the lowest energy state on the couch, but then you throw a laser beam and the cat is going to chase it. It was same thing as humans.

00;59;18;15 - 00;59;43;25

GEOFF

I want to come back to something. You said that I just want to like really you know hone in on which is, you said this is not an elective and it sounds like in your view you're making a pretty strong stance that for. And let me feed it back to you to see if it's right. But basically for every organization, for every person with AI, with these new technologies, this approach is not an elective.

00;59;43;25 - 00;59;57;15

GEOFF

This is something this is not. Oh, if these conditions are met, I need to start thinking differently. This is fundamental to being successful in adopting new technologies and being able to take advantage of new paradigms.

00;59;57;17 - 01;00;00;01

ALEXANDER

The worst.

01;00;00;04 - 01;00;21;27

ALEXANDER

The worst thing people no organization do right now. It's not, that they are not ready for this because I study also the level of readiness. I have a rubric that gives me points and so on is they do not they do not want to recognize where they stand. In other words, they are not even, facing their own attitude towards it.

01;00;21;27 - 01;00;52;10

ALEXANDER

Right. So what is the thing? The true promise of the AI is not speed. The true promise is redesign. And this is that this is where this is, a phenomenal challenge, but also a phenomenal opportunity. So this utopian future I was talking about, depends on two transformations which are linked. So the first one is to understand the historical purpose of tools, which I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, which have always been to conserve energy or consent, to conserve toil.

01;00;52;10 - 01;01;19;16

ALEXANDER

Right. Why? Because I want to create the blood level in my mind for a higher form of human existence and a higher form of human experience. And I call that contemplation. I call that the contemplative interval. And you may think, whoa, the audience may think, I don't know how to contemplate. I don't have any time to contemplate. But contemplation is just another word for doing nothing.

01;01;19;19 - 01;01;45;17

ALEXANDER

Why do you listen? Music. Listening to music is contemplation. Reading a point? Is contemplation of ideas. Going. After swallowing a good, red wine is also a contemplation of the quantity of that thing. So we do this contemplative analysis all the time. We just call it something else. We call it a tasting menu or, you know, some other thing.

01;01;45;19 - 01;02;09;26

ALEXANDER

So we say have to understand also that we cannot, the promise of this technology cannot be fulfilled if we force it into obsolete structures. And that's what's happening right now. That's why I'm saying redesign is the thing. What's happening right now is that we are forcing this thing into an obsolete structure, and we're expecting a fundamentally new result.

01;02;09;29 - 01;02;35;02

ALEXANDER

Now, if you ask me, journey to imagine a chair is going to imagine a chair, which means you are wasting the potential of the technology, if you ask me. Journey. Imagine a device that suspends the human body above ground in a relatively comfortable position while performing a task. Then you get something extraordinary that you cannot possibly imagine yourself.

01;02;35;02 - 01;03;04;06

ALEXANDER

So in that moment, you are using the technology to its advantage and its full expanse. Right? So. So you need new social institutions. Urban educational. You need architectures capable of receiving this intelligence. So that's why I'm saying it is almost an environmental condition that needs to happen for this technology to flourish in its full capability, not to be just adapted as a tool.

01;03;04;08 - 01;03;11;15

ALEXANDER

It's not a tool. It's a condition. So it's a way of being. It's, you know, it's like the rain.

01;03;11;18 - 01;03;50;06

ALEXANDER

Yeah, the rain can be used as a tool because you can create climate conditions for the rain, which are good for agriculture. But so to conclude this idea, the future is not the future that I'm thinking about when I say, this is utopian. It's not utopian. It's what happened to technology when it fulfilled its maximum maximization. So it's not a world where the human is made useless, but it is a world where usefulness was redefined so that we really like and we redefine many things where where we are really, really good at redefining things.

01;03;50;09 - 01;04;09;02

ALEXANDER

The seem the meaning of things. So we redefined garbage as, sorry. We redefined a grain on green onion as garbage when we cut the, the green part and then we throw it in the garbage, and then we come up with another thing and we call it,

01;04;09;02 - 01;04;17;22

ALEXANDER

compost. But remember, this whole step takes five seconds. You bought the onion, you paid money for it.

01;04;17;22 - 01;04;39;19

ALEXANDER

It was food. After the moment you cut a part of it, you kind of part of it, which is edible. And you throw it in the garbage, but you don't throw it in your regular garbage. You throw it in the compost garbage, and that becomes redefined in two seconds. Garbage compost. So we're very good at doing this really defining stuff.

01;04;39;21 - 01;05;09;09

ALEXANDER

We look at the sun and we see, oh, that's a symbol of life. The sun doesn't know that, but we we can define it, redefine all of these things. Right. So so the question is not, what work will humans still perform? Now that's what people are afraid of, right? So the better question is what forms of human meaning become possible, like what can become possible when compulsory effort to put food on the table is no longer the organizing principle of civilization?

01;05;09;16 - 01;05;30;00

ALEXANDER

Because that's how we did it. The organizing principle of civilization was you need a job, and because you need a job, you need to create systems that allow you to reach that moment of learning, knowing until you know what your job might be. You go to school, you become this and that, and then you work all your life in that job.

01;05;30;02 - 01;05;36;14

ALEXANDER

Well, that's not civilization. That's. That's right. No, a thousand years. It wasn't the same thing.

01;05;36;17 - 01;06;13;20

GEOFF

I want to cover one more topic. Just out of personal interest here. And that's contemplation, which we've talked about a few times now and again. There's a tension here for me because I love the idea that, you know, going to a museum is contemplation or, you know, listening to music is contemplation. There's this competing idea or there's this concern which maybe we just have in any generation that with social media, with even, you know, you mentioned Ted talks being 15 minute long and you said you're not thinking, you're just hearing somebody else's idea and believing it's yours, that some of the ways we consume media are not necessarily contemplative.

01;06;13;20 - 01;06;20;01

GEOFF

They're almost like anti contemplative, like they prevent you from thinking or they just give you,

01;06;20;06 - 01;06;22;01

ALEXANDER

you? Yeah. They absorb you.

01;06;22;03 - 01;06;37;09

GEOFF

Yes. So what do you make of that? Do you have a broader, you know, kind of viewpoint or paradigm for, you know, contemplation versus being absorbed by something else and then it's kind of the good or the bad or how we approach that.

01;06;37;13 - 01;07;01;26

ALEXANDER

Well, it's a question of the how you define contemplation. Also how you define meditation. And is riding a motorcycle a form of meditation? Technically it is because you are focused on nothing like in other words, you are focused on nothing and you are purely in that moment. I will argue that I'm addicted to, bulldog videos, English bulldog videos so I can watch English on videos for an hour.

01;07;01;28 - 01;07;48;01

ALEXANDER

Now, I don't think I'm, that that addiction is a contemplative performance because I'm sucked into short videos of very funny moments. I'm not doing anything else. I am completely relaxed. I probably laugh more than I laugh the rest of the day, so I don't see that as a bad thing. So I'm thinking of all these other moments in which I can allow myself not to be bothered by, fears and stress and, consequence and, and, and if you start seeking these kind of moments and I don't want to call them contemplative moments, but for lack of a better word of explaining what their purpose is, their purpose is purely to understand who

01;07;48;02 - 01;08;18;19

ALEXANDER

you are outside other constraints, like who you are removed from constraints, which I that gets me these societal constraints, clothes, whatever, who you are and then who you are is this person that starts to see visions of the of themselves and these visions of themselves, if they are on a background of music, are different than if they are the background of a book you are reading, because you are always projecting yourself into a situation, right?

01;08;18;21 - 01;08;40;01

ALEXANDER

You're always part of something. You don't think you are a part of social media when you consume it, but you are the consumer, so you are the thing for which the thing was being performed, right? But so I don't see that as being different. The contemplation, because, technically I don't see that, in any way being, outside of the realm of play.

01;08;40;03 - 01;08;57;05

ALEXANDER

That's a form of play. You are not doing anything. You're not working. It's unproductive. It's purely play. Right? So it has no time limit. So if you take a look at the rules of what makes play, play like social media fits every box.

01;08;57;08 - 01;09;15;20

GEOFF

so? So you're I just want to confirm this because it's interesting. And it's actually, in some ways a very unusual take that you are not making a value judgment about whether someone is at a museum or eating food they like, or watching a short form video or reading a book. It's all a form of the same thing.

01;09;15;23 - 01;09;32;24

ALEXANDER

a form of them performing only for themselves. It's a form of them being in touch with themselves, not doing anything for anybody else, not projecting an image. Of course, you can view on social media as an influencer, but that's a different issue. I'm not

01;09;32;24 - 01;09;33;04

Speaker 2

Right.

01;09;33;09 - 01;09;38;12

ALEXANDER

influencers. I'm discussing people that watch influence. That's a that's a that's not play anymore.

01;09;38;19 - 01;09;58;00

ALEXANDER

That is a thing. It has constraints. And the constraint is their relationship influence and influence that that's the relationship. I'm not talking about that when I'm saying social media, you know, watching Bulldogs perform tricks on a, on a board, it's phenomenal. Do you ever watch these videos?

01;09;58;02 - 01;10;07;07

GEOFF

No, no, I haven't I, you know, I've, I've, I have some English bulldogs in my life, but I can't say that I've gone down the. It's not a part of my identity, let's put it that way.

01;10;07;10 - 01;10;12;22

ALEXANDER

They are really good at the skateboarding. Like, really good because they

01;10;12;24 - 01;10;13;20

GEOFF

Wow.

01;10;13;22 - 01;10;19;23

ALEXANDER

low center of gravity. So and they seem to enjoy it. At least the ones I'm following

01;10;19;26 - 01;10;20;20

GEOFF

That's so funny.

01;10;20;24 - 01;10;29;12

ALEXANDER

I think, and this is not being part of, of a positive ment. No, I have all the reasons to distrust social media.

01;10;29;14 - 01;10;51;24

ALEXANDER

I'm of the age that most people would say, how come you even are involved with technology? Well, it happens. I was an early adopter of everything, so. So I don't fear it. I don't see it as a negative. I think any time consumed outside of obsessing about yourself, which is why I don't talk about the, the influencer part is, a time of contemplation.

01;10;51;24 - 01;11;15;12

ALEXANDER

It's a time in which life takes precedence over doing so. Being caught. Don't forget what these things are about. They're about being. Being is different than having and then work. So the human mind has these two halves to having to be. Erich Fromm wrote a fantastic book about this. And then we keep working with a, with a having part instead of working with a being.

01;11;15;14 - 01;11;22;27

ALEXANDER

So I want to be I'm pointing to the to the by the side of the head. It has the being part.

01;11;23;00 - 01;11;29;28

ALEXANDER

I am not positive for being positive. I can't find any negative.

01;11;30;01 - 01;11;36;09

ALEXANDER

rational enough to, you know, I don't believe in the theories of others. I believe only in my in my own experience.

01;11;36;11 - 01;11;43;27

ALEXANDER

And I'm doing everyday, I'm performing everyday with this technology and I'm enchanted

01;11;44;00 - 01;11;47;29

GEOFF

Enchanted. Enchanted. I love that that word choice.

01;11;48;04 - 01;11;57;10

GEOFF

Alexander, this has been really interesting. I appreciate your insight. We covered so much ground. Thank you so much for a fascinating conversation.

01;11;57;12 - 01;12;21;22

GEOFF

Most viewers don't know this, but Digital Disruption is developed by Infotech Research Group, a leading advisor to technology leaders around the world. If that's not you, you don't need to care. So skip ahead and enjoy our content. But if you are a technology leader, Infotech helps IT teams get projects done faster, better, and at a lower cost. Infotech provides unlimited access to practical tools and expert guidance

01;12;21;22 - 01;12;36;18

GEOFF

you need to execute at a fraction of the cost of traditional consulting. No matter the project, from AI strategy to cybersecurity to vendor negotiation. Infotech has you covered. Check it out at the link below and don't forget to like and subscribe!