This Human Business is a new podcast exploring the place for human experience in a world of commerce increasingly characterized by automation, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.
This podcast asks critical questions about the dominant business obsession with technological solutions. The technical side matters, of course, but at the heart of commerce, it’s the human presence in all of its uncertainty that drives us forward.
My trust is in a human experience that survives in the most meaningful way, and that a business that is beautiful is more than just a funny, arresting selling point used to differentiate without any substance beneath it. My hope is that the struggle to realize beautifully human experience within business is something that’s on the verge of becoming a social movement in our culture. I see signs of that. I’ve seen many individuals moving in that direction through their work, independently, each in their own way, each providing their own small piece to the larger movement. When people who see this need gather together, we can begin to assemble those pieces to create something larger than any one of us is capable of constructing on our own, something that can be just as powerful as the titanic systems of digital technology that currently dominate in the business world. I’m creating this podcast because, although I enjoy the benefits of digital technology in business, I see that the space for human experience in business, and in the world in general, is shrinking. It won’t be enough to merely hope, with faith in the invisible hand of the marketplace, that space for humanity will be preserved. We need to think, to organize, and to take action to define and to defend the place of human beings in business.
None of us can have a place in a world of unrestrained automation. If efficient optimization becomes the only goal of business, then elimination of humanity becomes the logical end. In order to avoid that end, we need to begin working now to articulate models of business in which human subjectivity is not regarded as a weakness, but as an asset that cannot be replicated through mechanical means.
To create a comprehensive model of human business is a daunting task of an immense scale, and in this first season of This Human Business, we’ll be asking questions and considering the challenge as much as coming up with solutions. If the movement of humanity in business is to succeed, it will only be through the decision by people to get involved. So, I also hope that this podcast will serve as a beacon, a call out to the other human beings in business, those who have been hoping for something better, something more beautiful. It’s a signal to let them know they are not alone, beckoning. Join us.
This Human Business is coming soon.