Keep Evolving and Stay Human with Eric Anctil: Recent Episodes
Eric Anctil
It's not your imagination, technology is changing you more today than ever before and the implications for what it means to be human have never been greater. Join host and professor of media and technology, Eric Anctil, each week as he takes you through everyday topics that invisibly shape your world. Eric leads you to the intersection of humans and technology and explores themes that are common and ubiquitous in the modern world to draw firm conclusions about the deeper significance of each. Sometimes humorous, often haunting, each episode opens up new ways of seeing and understanding with a call to action and a plan designed to keep you evolving and staying human. Follow all social @keshpodcast and www.keshpodcast.com.
On today’s show, Uber passenger ratings. I only have a 4.86 out of 5.0. How is that possible? I am really good at being driven around! Let's explore Uber passenger ratings and what it might say about the coming future.
On today's show ... we are going to stretch our concept of what it means to be a provocateur and what it means to provoke thinking in others and in ourselves about the kinds of relationships that we have with technology. I have no doubt that there are so many things that upset or frustrate you make and make you wonder why, why do we have this? Why do we do this? Why do I have to feel like I'm beholden to some tech or some relationship where technology is involved? So on today's show, let's start taking those things up and let's be willing to stretch ourselves to provoke others around us, whether it's our kids or our spouses, or our significant others, or our parents, or our neighbors, or our friends or whomever, but let's take up some of these larger issues that just kind of anger us all off and figure out ways that we can start to address them with each other and ourselves.
On today’s show … I want to make you a technology provocateur. Let’s explore why and how you should you regularly question your relationship to technology and why it is important for you to have conversations with others about the same. Let’s explore the ways we can provoke our thinking, and the thinking of those around us, for a better understanding of our technology and media rich world. It’s overwhelming in its totality, but we can make sense of it if we just ask the right questions and remain compassionate to ourselves and other along the way. If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are that you want to provoke yourself to think more deeply about and consider your relationship to technology and you likely want to help others do the same, at least on some level. Maybe it’s the relationship you and your spouse have with your smartphones (one of you is a casual user and the other is pretty addicted) or maybe it’s how you see you kids using their technology and you want to be sure they are making the best choices or maybe you’re worried about their behavior and actions in different digital spaces. Or maybe it’s that you want to better understand how you have changed because of technology. Whatever it is, you want to know more and you need the provocation to spurn you to think differently. And I love that. It may not always be a pleasant adventure or inquiry, but I can assure you the world needs more provocateurs who are willing to question, to be questioned, to think with intention, and to remain compassionate, empathic, and sympathetic along the way.
From the CosmicTechno Studio on Planet Earth, this is Keep Evolving and Stay Human with Eric Anctil. I am your host. This is the show where we stand together at the the intersection of humans and technology and explore things that are all around us to draw some firm conclusions about their deeper significance. On today’s show, we examine digital origin stories and our multiple digital selves. What is a digital origin story? And what are multiple digital selves? Who created your digital origin story and your multiple digital selves and why does it all matter anyway? For all of us, our origin story is likely mostly true, comprised of some details that are highlighted (or even embellished), some that have been forgotten (or intentionally ignored), but most treated with ambivalence because the details are fairly mundane. And like I said, it’s mostly all true, but the details do become accepted as fact the more we tell it to ourselves and to others. It’s all critical to our identity, even though it’s not exactly how we might have written it if we were given full creative control. It just is. Where and when you were born, who you were born to, the kind of childhood you had, etc. All are the history and memories of your origin story that helps you and your world understand the complexities of your character and who you are on a fundamental level. So thinking about all of that, what is your digital origin story? When did your digital life begin? When did you have a sense that there could be multiple versions of you and where did those “other selves” live? When did you first think of your IRL (in real life) or analogue version of you as something distinctly different than some other version or versions of you that existed in some other spaces? Do you remember an event that marked that experience or was it something that happened slowly over time and can’t be pinned to one moment or event?
Welcome to Keep Evolving and Stay Human with Eric Anctil. On today's show, we start with you because this is really a show about you, who you are, how you got here, what you think, where you go, what you buy, what you do, all of it informed, shaped, and guided by the technology that is all around you. Keep Evolving and Stay Human is a show where we stand together at the intersection of humans and technology and explore those things that are fundamentally challenging who we are as humans to hopefully draw some firmer conclusions about the deeper significance at the center of it all. Learn more at www.keshpodcast.com and follow on all social @keshpodcast.
It's not your imagination, technology is changing you more today than ever before and the implications for that change and for what it means to be human have never been greater. I’m Eric Anctil, professor of media and technology and host of the new podcast, Keep Evolving and Stay Human. Join me each week as I take you through everyday topics that invisibly shape your world, from living with constant surveillance (I’m looking at you Ring Doorbells), to imagining what the world will be like in the not-to-distant-future when almost everyone you know will have a robotlike companion that they are totally in love with. Think that sounds crazy? It’s not when you consider that that is basically what smartphones are to people today and all that’s really missing is the robot body. And when our phones have bodies, we will definitely keep sleeping with them and never leave them behind when we run to the store. If you think it’s hard to get people to look up from their phones now, wait until those phones are adoring robots. Let me guide you to the intersection of humans and technology and let’s explore together things are ubiquitous in the modern world and see if we can draw some firm conclusions about their deeper significance. Each episode will open up new ways of seeing and a provide a better understanding how technology is changing us and threatening our concepts of what it means to be human today. Trying to stay human in a world that feels like it’s constantly trying to make us more like machines is not easy, we need each other, so let’s do this together. I believe we can evolve into the best versions of ourselves and live up to our human potential, but we have to start paying better attention to all the invisible change and we have to start now. Together, we can Keep Evolving and Stay Human. Find the show wherever you listen to podcasts and learn more at http://keshpodcast.com (keshpodcast.com). That’s K E S H (Keep Evolving Stay Human) http://podcast.com (podcast.com) and follow on all social @keshpodcast.