41- What Is a Human for?

Aug 12

Living Well with Technology, episode 41 of the Human Pulse Podcast.

More than half of Web traffic is now the result of bots requests and AI agents. Some consider that humans are becoming spectators of what’s happening online, basically describing it as « the Dead Internet Theory ». Furthermore, even with no-one watching, big companies are still making money. Are we actually becoming irrelevant or is something else going on?

Then Anne and Fabrice make a connection with an article published in The Atlantic titled The End of Reading is Here. Are we loosing our brain capacity because we, as a species, don’t read as much as we used to? Well, we certainly need to adapt: generative AI tools are more often than not presented as means to replace our thinking. What if we took a step back and found ways to put intention back into our actions, online or otherwise? Fabrice describes his experiment with going back to handwriting leading to a surprising result: he went back to writing letters actually, but maybe not in the way you’d expect.

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Chapters

00:00 Quote

00:35 Are Humans Still Welcome?

03:15 The Yellow Bleak Road?

05:05 The End of Reading is Here

08:51 The Post-literate Society

12:22 The Impact of Passive Consumption

18:45 Use It or Lose It

21:37 Going Back to Handwriting

26:41 Putting back the intention

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