An Analog Brain In A Digital Age | With Marco Ciappelli cover art

An Analog Brain In A Digital Age | With Marco Ciappelli

An Analog Brain In A Digital Age | With Marco Ciappelli

By: Marco Ciappelli
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About this listen

 [ Formerly Redefining Society & Technology ] An Analog Brain In A Digital Age Podcast is your backstage pass to my mind — where analog meets digital, and the occasional pig flies. In an age racing toward algorithms and automation, the best ideas still come from curiosity, experience, emotion, and the unexpected connection. What you'll find are conversations on technology & society, storytelling in all its forms, branding & marketing, creativity, and the odd surprise.© Copyright 2015-2026 ITSPmagazine, Inc. All Rights Reserved Philosophy Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Protecting Kids Online Since 2007 and in the Age of AI: Ben Halpert on Savvy Cyber Kids at RSAC 2026

    Protecting Kids Online Since 2007 and in the Age of AI: Ben Halpert on Savvy Cyber Kids at RSAC 2026
    Mar 30 2026

    In this episode from RSA Conference 2026, Marco Ciappelli sits down with Ben Halpert, founder of the non-profit organization Savvy Cyber Kids, to discuss the critical intersection of child development and technology.

    Since its founding in 2007, Savvy Cyber Kids has been on a mission to provide parents and educators with the tools needed to guide children through the digital world. Ben explains why introducing technology too early can be detrimental to a child’s emotional preparedness and brain development, and why adult-led guidance is essential even when kids seem like "tech experts".

    In this conversation, we explore:

    The Evolution of Threats: Moving from MySpace and CRT monitors to 24/7 access via mobile devices.

    Early Intervention: Why the "rhyme and picture book" approach works for children as young as three to teach concepts like online aliases and stranger safety.

    Safe AI for Kids: Introducing a new partnership with Chaperone, a platform featuring "homework mode" and parental controls to ensure AI is a tool for learning, not a shortcut for thinking.

    Going Global: How the organization has expanded internationally with materials translated into Spanish, German, French, and Hebrew.

    About Our Guest

    Ben Halpert is a cybersecurity veteran with over 25 years of experience and the founder of Savvy Cyber Kids. He is dedicated to helping parents navigate the "wild" of the internet with positive, developmentally appropriate programming.

    Resources

    Savvy Cyber Kids Website: savvycyberkids.org

    More RSAC 2026 Coverage: itspmagazine.com/rsac

    Marco's Website: Marcociappelli.com


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    10 mins
  • Everyone Is Talking About Agentic AI at RSAC 2026. Almost Nobody Is Saying Anything Different | With Marco Ciappelli and Theresa Lanowitz

    Everyone Is Talking About Agentic AI at RSAC 2026. Almost Nobody Is Saying Anything Different | With Marco Ciappelli and Theresa Lanowitz
    Mar 29 2026

    Marco Ciappelli sits down with cybersecurity evangelist and thought leader Theresa Lanowitz at the end of day one on the expo floor for a conversation that cuts through the noise — from shadow AI and leadership accountability, to brand identity, to why most companies here can't articulate a message above the fray. Plus: a Peloton story that accidentally became the best explanation of brand loyalty you'll hear all week.

    Chapters:
    - Judge Sentences CEO to 8 Hours on the RSAC Floor
    - End of Day One: Setting the Scene
    - Who Is Theresa Lanowitz
    - The Binary View of AI: Love It, Fear It, or Find the Gray
    - Leadership's Role in the AI Transformation
    - Shadow AI: The Insider Threat Nobody Is Naming
    - Why Some Companies Still Say No to AI
    - Fighting With Your LLM (We All Do It)
    - AI Slop and the Brand Differentiation Problem
    - The Peloton Story: What Real Brand Loyalty Looks Like
    - RSAC 2026: Everyone Sounds the Same
    - Where Is Agentic AI Actually Going
    - Integration, Orchestration, ROI: The Real Questions
    - Make AI Your Own

    What's actually covered: → Why agentic AI is dominating RSAC 2026 — and why it all sounds the same → Shadow AI: the insider threat nobody is calling an insider threat → What strong brand presence actually looks like (hint: it's not a circus tent) → Why fear — not budget — is the real reason companies still say no to AI → Integration, orchestration, ROI: what comes after the hype → The one message that matters: make AI your own 🔗 More from RSA Conference 2026: itspmagazine.com/rsac


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    25 mins
  • New Book: Climate Capital — Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future | An Interview with Tom Chi | An Analog Brain In A Digital Age With Marco Ciappelli

    New Book: Climate Capital — Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future | An Interview with Tom Chi | An Analog Brain In A Digital Age With Marco Ciappelli
    Mar 1 2026
    New Book: Climate Capital — Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future | An Interview with Tom Chi | An Analog Brain In A Digital Age With Marco Ciappelli What if the economy isn't broken — just badly designed? Tom Chi, Google X founding member, inventor of 77 patents, and venture capitalist at At One Ventures, joined me on An Analog Brain In A Digital Age to discuss his new book Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future. From the streets of Florence to the strip malls of Silicon Valley, from the mechanics of attention capture to the physics of ecological economics, this conversation goes far beyond climate. It's about how we design the systems we live inside — and whether we have the will to redesign them before it's too late. 📺 Watch | 🎙️ Listen | marcociappelli.com Article Body Tom Chi has worked on things that changed the world. Microsoft Office. Web search. The self-driving car. Google Glass. He'll tell you himself that not all of them were hits, and he's fine with that — that's what it means to be an inventor. But what he's working on now is different in scale from anything before. Not a product. Not a platform. A redesign of the global economy. His new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, starts from a premise that sounds radical until you think about it for more than a few minutes: economics is a design discipline. And right now, it's poorly designed. Not maliciously — poorly. We built systems optimized for short-term capital extraction, and we're living with the consequences. The question Tom is asking is whether we can redesign them before those consequences become irreversible. He didn't get there through ideology. He got there through Florence. Tom was auditing sustainable MBA courses alongside his partner when he was invited to a conference in Italy. He landed, got a day off, wandered the streets — and something clicked. The entire city is built from sustainable materials. And it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. That moment demolished an assumption he didn't even know he was carrying: that sustainable living means downgrading. Florence is a 2,000-year-old counterexample to every joke about Birkenstocks and cold showers. We knew how to do this. We just forgot. Which brings us to the first big thread of our conversation: the pattern of forgetting. We talked about this in the context of technology, not history. Specifically, how the shift from software you paid for to software supported by advertising quietly changed everything. When you pay for a tool, the goal is to make it better. When the tool is supported by advertisers, the goal is to keep you inside it as long as possible. Clippy used to annoy us because it interrupted our train of thought. Now interrupting our train of thought is the entire business model. Tom has a phrase for what's happening at scale: cognitive despoiling. We spent the 20th century strip mining the physical resources of the planet. We're spending the 21st century strip mining the cognitive resources of humanity. There's a finite number of coherent thoughts this civilization can produce. And we're burning through them — with misinformation, amygdala triggers, and dopamine loops — the same way we burned through forests and waterways. The damage is invisible because it's underwater, like ocean trawling. But it's real. And it compounds across generations. This is where I had to push back a little. Because I grew up in Florence. I made the jump to digital. I love my vinyls and I love my streaming library. I'm part of the contradiction he's describing. And I asked him: given all this, where do you even start? His answer is the most practical thing I've heard in a long time. Start with physical businesses. The ones actually causing most of the damage — to water, soil, air, biodiversity. And here's the part that almost nobody is talking about: 90% of the cost structure of a physical business already aligns ecological and economic goals. Fewer raw materials used means lower feedstock costs and less extraction. Less energy consumed means lower processing costs and fewer emissions. Shorter supply chains mean lower logistics costs and fewer transport emissions. The economy and the ecology are already pointing the same direction on 90% of what matters. The 5% that isn't aligned — pollution — is what the lobbyists fight about. So that's what dominates the news. And that's why we think this is harder than it is. Tom's firm, At One Ventures, is built around this insight. They invest in what he calls the triad: disruptive deep tech that delivers radically better unit economics and radically better environmental outcomes at the same time. Their portfolio companies don't sell sustainability. They sell efficiency. The ecological benefit is baked in by design. The customers buy it because it's cheaper and better. The planet wins as a side effect. That's the book. Part toolkit, ...
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    52 mins
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