Technology, Connected - Can Technology Really Be Used For Good? Khang Nguyen Trieu

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Is technology for good anything more than a marketing strategy?Technology shapes everything. From how you work and connect to how you make decisions. But is humanity using it to solve the right problems? And when millions of people rely on boring, repetitive jobs to survive, what happens when AI takes them away?On Victory in Europe Day, Khang Nguyen-Trieu joins Mark and Jeremy to Think on Paper about what ethical technology actually looks like in the real world. With decades of experience building large-scale systems, he brings grounded strategies for setting boundaries, listening to people, and turning complexity into advantage.If tech is meant to serve people, why does it so often forget they're there?Please enjoy the show. And share with a curious friend. --Join a community of disruptors and curious minds: ⁠www.thinkingonpaper.xyz⁠--Chapters (00:00) Introduction to Technology for Good (02:01) The Impact of Technology on Society (04:07) Social Media: A Double-Edged Sword (05:35) AI and Human Relationships (09:57) Shifting the Focus: Profit vs. Purpose (12:10) Rethinking Technology's Role (16:22) The Need for Ethical Considerations (20:52) Cultural Perspectives on Society and Individualism (22:45) Empathy in Technology and Human Interaction (24:45) The Role of Technology in Hospitality (28:38) Balancing Automation and Human Connection (34:16) Philosophical Reflections on Humanity and Wisdom   

Disruptors and Curious Minds. Welcome to another episode of Thinking on Paper where we unpack technology. We smash around with culture. We shake out what comes out and sprinkle some interesting nuggets for you to consider and think on paper as we do. My name is Jeremy. This is Mark. We have a very special episode for you today. We are recording today on May 8th, 2025, for those of you guys listening 100 years from now.

Mark, what's special about May 8th? And why is it important to this conversation today? Oh yes, victory in Europe Day, 80 years since the end of the Second World War, and we're taking the opportunity to speak about technology for good. Obviously, there has been incredible advancements since the end of the Second World War. Technology has flourished. The human species has taken on the mantle of technology and steamrolling ahead. And we're going to focus on the positives today, aren't we?

We're going to speak about how technology is being used for good, where it's being used for good, how we can make it more used for good, the strategies, the industries, the companies, the people, the thinking. Yeah, we got calls back to shows with Don Norman, the human-centered design, the way he thinks about solving the world's greatest problems and challenges. We got callbacks to a few other episodes. So without further ado, let's bring out our guests, Mark. Give us a quick intro and we'll dive right into this stuff. Give you a quick intro and just you just mentioned about maybe the ambiguity of tech. And I could just list technologies for an hour that have been developed since the end of the, the Second World War since 1945. And I'll let you decide, listener, if they are good, bad, or being used for both good and bad. Vaccination, internet, renewable energy, satellite technology, CRISPR, microfinance, assistive technologies, open source technology, water purification, electric vehicles,

early disease detection, nuclear, surveillance, deep fake, social media, plastics, autonomous weapons, autonomous vehicles, AI, genetic engineering, IoT, blockchain, cloud computing. You could add in jet propulsion, mining, shipping. The list is endless. Is it good? Is it good? Is it bad is ambiguous. We're going to talk about that with our guest today. Very special. Welcome to Kang Neng True senior tech leader for 25 years. He has been educating, speaking, learning, teaching and advancing technology for good for a long time. Welcome to the show. Thank you for thinking on paper with us. Hello. Hi, Mark. Hi, Jeremy. Super happy to be with you. Let's dive right in. Mark set the tone with, hey, there's a bunch of different technologies we can

explore. Some are clearly being applied to good. Some are. clearly nefarious, some are in the middle. When you say the words technology for good, tell us what that actually means in your world. Yes. What is interesting indeed is to be able to identify what is the impact, you know, of a technology that we are using. Often we are seeing that technology are neutral because technology is just there and then it really depends on how people are making use of technologies. At the end, I think that when we are saying technology for good, it is whatever that the technology is doing, is it actually having an impact in the right way or not on the place where we are living? And then also for

humankind, there was a whole debate, you know, for example, on social media platform. Are they actually having a positive impact, a negative impact? The owners of social media platform usually say that they are neutral because they just provide a means. Is it true or not? probably that we can debate on that. So at the end, I think that the topic of technology for good is really about looking at the holistic impact of when you are using a technology on whether it pushes the boundaries in a certain direction, which is positive for humankind and for the planet,

or it kind of tries to pull in the other head. Let's just jump on that hot potato of social media. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it neutral? Is it the responsibility of parents, users, tech companies, governments, if it isn't? Where do you currently sit? Personally, I would really agree with what Yuvaldua, I really pushed forward.

Even if we say that all the topic of social media and user generated content coming with the topic of a web two zero is that it is giving freedom for people to be able to express freely. you know, there is a saying which says that the freedom of people stops where actually starts to go against the freedom of others. And that's what is happening on social media. I think the reality is that the social platform is not neutral. The intent of the social media is actually really to create more user engagement. And unfortunately, we see that what creates more user engagement

often is not things that are rational or that are going to be, you know, pushing into having moderate conversations, but rather having extreme conversations. That's where I think that there is a certain hypocrisy of the owners of the social platform. Social media, as it sits right now, really when you pull the thread back, the goal of all these companies, the goal, the directive back to all the stakeholders in these companies, shareholders, the whole nine yards, the root metric is to increase user engagement to keep people on and not jump off their platform. The algorithm doesn't like poetry and moderation, does it? What do you think about Zuckerberg's? Hey, guys, I've figured out how we're going to solve human loneliness and we're going to create bots that will be your friends on social media.

How does that land with you? I think it's another kind of scary thing which is happening because it's another, I would say a step ahead in two, actually bringing humans far from each other. Because I think in our society today, and I see that, you know, into the younger generation, what we start to see happening is the fact that kids nowadays are kind of very confident into using their mobile phone to discuss with each other or to discuss even with adults. Sometimes they can seem to be quite at ease.

And then when you see them in real life, sometimes they are very embarrassed because they don't know how to behave or how to read the physical, I would say, expression of people when they are face to face. And that I think we are kind of already reaching a point where it's a bit worrying in terms of human relationships. And now that indeed Marcosuka-Barre is saying, oh, but great, maybe you don't even have to interact it on the digital platform with a human anymore because actually your best friend

will be a young AI. it's really going to create some big questions about how as humans we interact in the real life. Also, you know, to mention a very, very kind of pragmatic topic is you look at teenagers. Usually at my age and probably at your age also, when you started to be a teenager, you are meeting some girls, etc. You just start to feel, okay, how I'm going to approach this girl and then you make a lot of mistakes, etc. And now these kind of things may not exist anymore because a teenager may actually prefer to take the safety of actually interacting with the AI girlfriend or AI boyfriend, so that's not to be rejected, etc. So it raises a lot of questions about even how actually the young generations are going to be able to create real relationships between themselves.

Is this technology manipulating humans innate need to belong to something? Yeah, in a certain way and I think it's also a certain way, you know, to push us far from the hardships of life. I think because actually if you look at it and actually I'm using a lot myself, you know, generally TV AI in my work

to optimize my work. And actually, generally TVI is made in such a certain way that it's always, you know, very positive and always very accommodating. You don't have to argue anymore, but also it makes that things seem to be much easier. You don't have any challenges anymore. You are not going to actually have any failure anymore.

And the thing is that I believe that the way that each of us grow is also because we have failure in our life and we learn things from failure so that we can actually grow up. As you say, indeed, I think that it's also a certain way to kind of take us out of the reality. The species is evolving with the environment. As the environment changes, the animal evolves, and the environment is changing, and the animal is evolving to it.

Jeremy mentioned Don Norman, big friend of the show, Don Norman, he came on, we spoke about a humanity-centered design. He has seven principles to his humanity-centered design. They are, number one, solve the right problem. Number two, focus on the entire ecosystem. Number three, designed for the long term. Number four, emphasize ethics and responsibility. Number five, work with not for communities.

Number six, embrace complexity and systems thinking. Number seven, which Jeremy alluded to with the bottom line of all these tech companies, is profit and user engagement. Number seven, measure success differently, well-being, equity, resilience. Another way to measure success. But we can't do that because, as Jeremy said, everyone's measurement of success is the bottom line. How, as what we've just said about social media and other technologies at large,

going into the work that you're doing, how do we push technology and how have you done that? How have you shown that in your work? Towards being technology for good, not technology for money and profit. If we are talking about profit, it's probably the $1 billion question.

$80 trillion question. Definitely because I think that the essence of how our world is built today is around the topic of money and profitability. Some people would decide on it to put the highest priority to accumulate wealth

or not. That one is another topic. I think that probably what we are some positive signs that we are starting to see in some places and I think especially Europe

is at the forefront is that if we look at it, the topic you know of sustainability for example, in Somalilin, has started to become a kind of bigger, bigger place in the society, but also in the way that companies are scored. And typically in Europe, there is this regulation,

which is called CSRD, which is a regulation which has started to be enforced last year, where companies of a certain size have actually to integrate in, they are reporting sustainable criterias along the financial criterias when they are communicating, you know, they are reports. So what does it mean? It means that I think

for the first time since the advent of capitalism, you start to have in terms of evaluation of the impact of companies, not only the financial aspect, but also criteria which are about

the corporate sustainability impact of companies. Now the big question will be whether Europe will be able to keep the stand on these new policy because we see that with the geopolitics happening, there are some new priorities which are emerging, like for example putting the priority on defense for Europe,

putting also bigger focus on AI with or not the impact of regulation of AI. The root is like if I come up with an idea or the three of us come up with an idea we work really hard on that idea we build something compelling that people want to interact with transact with there's value to that there's value to that equation which we would look at the far end because you know food on the plate you know getting a return for our work that's what it is but that that mechanic is the one that might need to shift so let me let me throw something out mark i'm going to i'm going to throw this funky question out

yeah and so it requires almost a re-scripting of things let's just say Kang let's just say we were pulled in to invent the rules around technology. And we just figured out, hey, this thing called technology, here's what it is. It's kind of a means to scale things, but makes things more efficient, productive, accessible. It does this. It's like magic. It's magic. How do we create accountability? How do we harness its power while limiting its nefarious effects? If you could script the whole thing from start to finish, what does that look like? Are you going back in time, Jeremy, we're going back to VE Day 1945 and we're starting again. Yeah, yeah, as if we don't even know what technology is.

And technology, the only thing that we know about technology is the definition I've just given you the... That's very interesting, Jeremy, what you just mentioned about, what is technology indeed. It's something which, as you say, allows to scale, allows to be more efficient, allows to be more productive. That's what has been happening actually for all the past decade and it's going, you know, up exponentially. And I think that maybe what is missing in the definition of technology or maybe what we missed when we pushed so much on technology was to introduce the dimension of philosophy

and ethics. So now, you know, I remember, so I did my studies in France. I went to an engineering school in France. And at that time, when we were going through the exams, we were having math physics, chemistry, a little bit of French, but all the big, you know, scoring were just about all this heart science. And as a matter of fact, even at that time, so it was about 25 plus years ago, even myself, I didn't think that philosophy was something important because to become a good engineer,

you didn't really have to do that because to think about and to design systems which are scalable, as you say, which are efficient, which are going to be as much automated as possible, you don't really need the philosophy to come into account. And I think that's where we hit the wall today, is that probably that if we should redo the, I would say, the scenario, as you say, and we say, okay, now actually the engineers that we are training, it's not only about being good in math, it's not only about being good in mathematics.

in computer science. But actually it's good also. It's also about being good in history, about being good in philosophy. I think it would have changed the way that we designed the system and the intent that we designed the system. It's that often I see, you know, in my work, when I discuss with peers in different industry,

but all working in tech, sometimes I see I meet some brilliant, minds which are really focused on being achieving to build the best system, but the best system in terms of efficiency, in terms of the, of the, you know, very much scalability, etc. And never so much about the implications or the intent behind. Because it's how we have been as a whole generation of engineers, been trained, and that's how we think. At this stage, we are starting to say, oh, maybe we.

created and alien intelligence as Yuvaluare is said. I don't maybe that we should have thought about putting a bit more of ethical considerations into that. That's where I think, I hope that it's not too late. Our technological power has outpaced our ethical maturity. Okay, we can't put the genie back in the bottle. We can't go back in time. We are where we are.

I don't think most tech builders have studied philosophy or history or ethics. We're a big believer in the 80-20 principle here. So inventors, CEO, and there's Vodius, listening to this. From principle, should they adopt or study or think about now on the 8th of May 2025 going forward since we can't go back? What's the most bang for your book ethically in technology?

So this one, I'm not sure how to explain that in English. So if you allow, I'm going to use just a bit of Vietnamese. And I would try to elaborate around. You know, in Vietnam, I think in all families, when you have kids and as parents, you raise actually your kids. There is a saying that what you want to do is to teach your kids to Lengoi. What does that mean in Vietnamese? Lain means actually rising up or becoming and Nui is a person. So it means what you want to do as a parent is to teach your kid to become a person.

What does that mean to become a person? It's obviously having a good education so that you can have a good career, so you can have a good life, etc. But it's more than that. It's also about educating a child so that this child has a place in the society where he or she can contribute positively, can become someone who has a moral compass and who actually can be a good citizen

to be someone good in the society. And if I come back to your question mark, I think it should be as simple as that in terms of sometimes guidelines for a CEO, for an inventor. Is that just to have that in mind when trying to bring up a new initiative, to bring up a new concept,

to keep in mind this kind of concept, to say, okay, what I am doing as a person, actually, is that something that I think is going to benefit the society at large and being a very kind of honest also, I think, to yourself. Because as I would say, probably if I could sum up, that would be through these two words in Vietnamese. Such a refreshing perspective. I love the language behind that, too, and the intentionality of just bigger picture thinking. So we have these different views, the European view, the Asian Pacific view, and you know, I'm here in the States. And this isn't every single person in the States, but there's a

prevailing methodology to succeed in business, to do what it takes, to climb the ladder as far as you can, as quickly as you can. Sometimes at no cost, just get there as quick as you can, hold on as long as you can, and then maybe 30 years later, you can go be happy somewhere, which is like entirely depressing. It's not everybody, but it's definitely a theme that people can agree that is surrounding in the U.S. The one thing I think that is missing that you have a little bit sprinkled into your description is I think empathy is a missing link to everything else. A technology is an amplifier. Technology is jet fuel on an idea or a concept. But if you don't understand empathy or you don't cultivate empathy on the front and I think is where things go wrong,

how does empathy play into some of the things you think about? Maybe I just come back to something you mentioned because I find that a very good point also to talk about. You are talking about culture. You are indeed living in the US. Mark, you are in Europe. Myself, I'm today living

in Asia, even if I was born and raised in France. And I think the cultural aspect is super important if you look at it. It's true that, for example, the US, at least from what I know about the US and maybe

and maybe Jeremy you will want to elaborate about that. But I think it's the U.S. is a nation of possibilities and a nation which was rebuilt about conquest. And I think that in the culture of American people, there is nothing that is not possible. And it's also a question of there is no scarcity of resource. Because when we talk about U.S. as a country, the reality is that U.S. is a continent.

It's not like a country like France or UK or Vietnam or Japan, which are much smaller. It's actually a continent. And so I think that the perspective is completely different about how you look at building something. And that's interesting. In Europe, and that may be marked you would want to elaborate. I think Europe is really much more into a lot of reasoning about a lot of principles that have been built. of their centuries of history across the different

determined countries. And Asia, I think, so it's always difficult, you know, to just sum up in a single frame. But overall in Asia, the concept of society prevails over the individual. Also, that things that are done,

usually it's not just in the logic of an individual who wants just to progress alone by his own. But what the individual is doing is always in the context of the society and whether it may actually impact or not the society. And probably that's also how it impacts the approach of what good means across different culture. I see America as the teenager.

Europe as the middle-aged man or woman trying to get something done before they become obsolete and Asia as wise, the wise older man, the wise older statesperson who's kind of worked it out and now isn't, they've worked out and they're not trying to push back against a teenager because they're wise enough to realize that that's not really what they should be doing and that's how vice it. The teenagers may be a little bit hopeful. We might be in toddler land in certain cases, but moving, moving, along with that, I want to push back on a little bit, Kang, on the empathy thing, because I think

it's really powerful, because empathy is an understanding of someone else, an understanding of how that someone else fits into the same thing that you're a part of. And it seems to me, like our ability to elevate our thinking to a more holistic level is one of the challenges. I think it's about bringing the people intake also out of their room where you just interact with your computer and with your CloudGPT or your cursor.com to produce code. It's about actually be able to spend time more with human people. So that actually you develop and again we come back, you know, about how to develop this kind of human skills.

It's about actually being interacting with human people. For example, it's interesting, you know, the conversation that we are currently having together. It's super interesting but I am 100% sure that if we were sitting together in the same room in a coffee having the same discussion we would create an even bigger

connection that we are creating now. And it's a very and it's quite incredible because you say but you see each other you see my hands which are also trying to express I would say things but it's different and I think that

empathy at the end starts with spending time with other people and not just like people typically, but people who are actually customers, who are actually even colleagues that often you don't really interact with, really, to be able to understand better everyone's motivations, everyone's concerns and so forth. I have a little bit of a background in hospitality. Jeremy, you probably say no, but I did it.

What have you seen? What have you been doing to use technology, in hospitality because hospitality seems okay in the booking in the back office yeah okay but hospitality as a customer facing industry you don't really think that technology plays a big well what have you been what have you been doing what have you seen where is it going you are right indeed to say that hospitality you didn't see so much tech for now in the hotel when you go into into a hotel things have started to change quite a lot especially since covid why so because during covid what happened at some

point was that actually, you know, you had to respect some safe, safe distancing measures between the hotel staff and the guests. So that's where digital technologies have started to roll out more and more. So there are things like, for example, the self-check-in to be able, you know, to do your check-in with your mobile phone without having to go to the, so that you can do that on your own. You go up to the topic of actually be able to have. the key of your room on your mobile phone

without having actually to have the physical key to open the room and so on and so on up to being able to order your having all your in-room services from your mobile phone, etc. What is interesting is that you could say, oh yeah, but doesn't it take out all the human touch

that you would be expecting to have in hotels with guests and there's a whole lot of thinking currently to say all these kind of digital interactions that are offered to the guest that's to enable, you know, having a kind of more seamless stay in the hotel. But it's also the opportunity to reinvent the relationship between the hotel staff and the guest. Meaning what? Meaning that actually instead of having a hotel staff behind the front desk the whole day just to say, hello, how you doing?

Can you give me your passport so I can do the check-in? You can start to rethink about maybe having the hotel staff engage more in better discussions with a guest, asking, for example, if they are here on holiday, is it the first time that they are staying in the city? Or in that case, maybe you should go and visit the zoo of a Singapore, which is really worth it because it was just renovated and be able to create more meaningful or meaningful. So the reallocation of the human element, human energy to make it even more impactful. I've got a question for you both, actually. So you walk into a store, you're buying some food, you're buying a snack or something.

Two opportunities. One opportunity is the self-checkout line. One opportunity is interacting with the cashier. Which one do you choose and why? I use both. In a shot, I tend to go to the self-service because it's quicker. so where I live, they don't seem to employ many people in the supermarket. They have to wait a long time if you go to a queue,

which I think that might be by design. Last year, I flew, I was at Manchester Airport, couldn't buy food from a person. Every restaurant had QR codes and I had to do it by my phone. And I didn't eat because I was so frustrated by it and so disappointed by it that I didn't eat anything because it was ridiculous. And I think that there's a very fine line between automating and just ripping the experience to pieces

and making it mechanical. And I guess it's what you know. So I guess a 20 year old who's that's all they used to won't have a problem with that. But me who's a 45 year old who grew up with people, I have a problem with that. So to answer your question, I'd use both depending on the scenario situation

and how angry are I feeling about the optimization of everything. Yeah, for not to eat. Man, that's, yeah, that's big. What about you, Kang? What do you think? So I'm thinking a few different things. So honestly today, 90% of the time I go to the self-service because one, it's faster.

But also, the second point is that if I have to go, you know, to the cashier with a human person, usually it's because I have more goods to buy and it doesn't fit on the scale. At the end, what happens when I go to the cashier with the human person? The very best that I can do is, hello, how are you doing today? and thank you very much. And that's it. Because anyway, there are some other people in line so you're not going to start, you know,

opening a conversation about house life, etc. And so that's where I... Your dad doesn't even answer the tail talking to the person. And so I think that's a very good question because I think that's where there needs to be actually a job redesign because the reality is that being a person doing the cashier is really, you know, a kind of a job which is not a job that is fulfilling. Doing that every day, I think it doesn't have any value.

And the way that I would see that really happening is the use case I would see that happening is, for example, not to actually have only self-service checkout so that you don't need any humans anymore. But when I go to the supermarket, typically sometimes I need to buy a bottle of wine and because we have some guests coming at home, and actually I don't know anything about wine because I cannot drink alcohol, it gives me asthma. So whenever I go to the supermarket,

I don't know anything, I start to take my phone to enter you know the name of the wine. Is it good or not? Okay, but it's a bit expensive. What about if I take this one, is it okay or not? And here, you could have actually a human person who could actually be there and with whom you can actually engage a conversation,

saying, okay, actually I have some friends coming tonight. I don't know anything about wine. Can you advise me something? Oh, what are you cooking, et cetera? But I don't want to pay to me. It's too expensive for me. It's one. And that's where I would really see, you know, the value of the human interaction.

And that's why I hope that we will see actually the jobs evolving so that it become again a bit more meaningful. And that's how we can use outside technology. for good in this case. I'm going to push back on that with law number seven in Don Norman's humanity-centered design, measure success differently. How incentivized would most shops, businesses, be to redesign those jobs for the sake of some nice human interaction?

I'm skeptical of how many actually would if they could put four salaries out. They would probably choose to do that, wouldn't they? So that's a very good point because I think there are. with a topic about guest satisfaction or even guest, you know, loyalty, that comes with that. And I'm going to give you a very good example that just happened today in the, where I, we're close to where I am working. There is a hotel with a lobby in which generally when I'm doing, you know, some professional catch-up. I like to go because the ambience is nice. You can just sit and you order coffee or tea or any drink.

and you can cheat chat. So I'm going there regularly. And every time I pay it, then I give my loyalty card because I can get points at the F&B of this hotel lounge. And I think about a few a few,

a few, maybe four, five weeks ago, I started to go there and open presenting my loyalty card to the waiter when I wanted to pay. He told me, actually no need.

I already entered it. And I was very surprised, you know, because it's not like I'm a VIP or whatever. Today I came back again and again. He said, oh, it's okay. I already entered it. I asked him, but how come you know what is my number? Because it's a number on 16 digit or something like that.

And say, oh, because actually I see you coming quite regularly. So I have my personal notebook and I write down your number so that you don't have to give it me, give it to me every time. This has been an interesting conversation. It's a tough topic to unpack because technology for good requires the ability to think beyond yourself, to think beyond what we're trained to do from a business success perspective, to think about some of the developing some of the softer skills, which are the best skills, I think, empathy, curiosity, emotional IQ, all of that fun stuff that we don't spend a lot of time with. But that needs to be one of these inputs. So I'm going to leave you with one last thing. And I know. Mark has a question from a tremendous interview that we had with Kevin Kelly, a carryover question. But I'm envisioning, this is the entrepreneur in my head, envisioning this machine to submit MVP's and pieces and parts of technology to understand the philosophical outcome of those paths. That's just what's spinning around in my head.

But I think it's been a great conversation. I love your perspective on technology, being able to potentially increase human interaction in a more intentional way by automating some things and by increasing opportunity for meaningful connection. I think that's where it's at. Mark, let's get in his career request because it might take a second. Last week we had Kevin Kelly on thinking on paper and he left a question which I think we're going to ask every guest from now on. Could we say he's part of our interview team if we're using one of his questions? Using Kevin Kelly for good. His question was what should humans be.

I think that's that's a philosophical question actually. So that's indeed a note to share that actually we could probably write an essay

on this kind of question. Maybe on this one so I will come back to all the explanation of the Vietnamese saying.

So what should human be? I would answer in Vietnamese is Lengoi and then you can go back to the middle

of the podcast to understand what it means. But in English I would say that in a world, probably we could also sum up what should humans be. I think they should be wiser. I think if you look at it from the beginning of our human history, whether in ancient civilizations in Greece or in ancient civilization in Asia, I think you always had philosophers

who have been looking at how actually people can be wiser in terms of their nature, in terms of they are placed in the society. And I think what has happened is that technology has evolved much faster than our wisdom as a human species. And that today we have a kind of very big disconnect between where technology brings us and all the potential that it brings, whether positive or negative. And that on the other side in terms of wisdom, maybe we are still at maybe. 2000 years back where Socrates or Confucius were asking some questions that today are probably still the same and on which we haven't completely evolved.

Wonderful, wonderful thought. There is the illusion of wisdom because of these things, right? We think wisdom is access to information to repeat and say to somebody. So what is the biggest barrier to wisdom? That's another tough question about the biggest barrier to wisdom. Ego. and maybe time. I think one of the big barrier

in today's world, time is always you always try to be faster. You have to deliver faster. You have to be faster than competition. Everything is going faster. And I think that for us human, it doesn't leave the time to take a step back, to pause and actually to really reflect

so that we can improve. And actually, I think it's thanks to the kind of conversation that you are leading that maybe we can. can become a little bit wiser after that. I think you hit another brilliant point with time. And you can't optimize wisdom. We seek to optimize everything as humans.

We want to become more efficient, faster, better, cheaper. But wisdom requires time. Wisdom requires, I like to say, like this playful willingness to meander through things and just kind of be and think and all of that. And we don't give ourselves the time. So make time. Create your wisdom. Like as Carlo Revelli, we learned from Carl Overvary,

value time doesn't exist, Jeremy. Oh my gosh, that's a fact, too. Wow. Well, there you have it, folks. We are unpacking this intersection between tech and humanity. I think we talked a lot about what some of the inputs to using tech for good, what are some of the things we need to understand for that as well, some great examples. And thank you so much for joining us today.

And please keep us posted where you're headed, how you're doing, what you're doing next, because I love your mindset on this stuff. Mark, closing thoughts on your side? It's the 8th of May, lest we forget. We've seen what technology, when wielded for bad, can do, our darkest days. I plead people to just think about the technology that they use. Because for me, technology for good is about building up what's in here, building up the human species, not taking us out of the equation.

And I think that it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of conversations like this and a lot of people to move that bottom line search for profit that Jeremy mentioned at the very beginning of the show where technology is about that for most people. So it's going to take more time and conversations like this to meet it the other way on the spectrum. If your curiosity is sparked, disruptors and curious minds, thinking on paper. At xyz, you can see all of our episodes. We have a book club. We read books together.

We do it together. Human things. We talk. We playfully meander through things. But, Kang, thanks again, so much. much for joining us. Be curious. Stay disruptive. Keep thinking on paper.