Introduce Yourself

[Applied-Metaphors]

Hi there everyone:

I’m Alex, a hypnotherapist and addiction counselor who founded TRIBE; Canada’s earliest and one of its largest online communities. I’ve operated TRIBE for nearly 25 years now, so I guess that kind of makes me a pioneer in Canadian tech. or perhaps even a dinosaur

For a few years now I’ve been watching the impact of social media on society in general and on my friends specifically. After reading Nir Eyal’s book HOOKED, and especially Natasha Dow Schüll’s excellent Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, I decided to explore social media triggers and addictive design components in depth from a hypnotherapist’s perspective.

A lot of what happens to people as they engage with social media is below their level of awareness. Automatic behaviors are installed in users unconsciously by repeated use of social media products, making it very difficult or even impossible for people to quit or cut back on social media use, even if they try.

Time is the most valuable resource we have, and social media companies have convinced people to donate hours a day of their most valuable resource; their time - for free, and they have installed triggers in people to perpetuate this distraction.

But what nearly every news story has missed is the enormous loss of productivity caused by these social media products. People’s attention is being defocused away from their careers, businesses, friends and families into a world of artificially manufactured engagement. It turns out that even using an hour less social media a day gives you an extra hour to spend with your kids, your work, or be engaged with things that’ll actually improve your life.

Many people are now using apps like Moment to measure their daily phone use and are shocked to find they still spend 2-4 hours a day on social media. But when they try to cut back, they find they can’t. Knowing how much time you waste on social media and actually doing something about it are two different things, so I wanted to build a therapeutic product to help people use their full potential to disengage from social media.

The unconscious mind and automatic behaviours are addressable with hypnotherapy, so I created a specialized therapeutic audio download called UNHOOKED - Break Free From Social Media which is carefully designed to help people reduce their social media use or even quit social media, much more easily.

UNHOOKED is a 30 minute audio download you listen to once a day for a week, and then once a week for a month. UNHOOKED gets you into a very deep meditative state by combining therapeutic metaphors and suggestion. It allows you to unconsciously block social media triggers and refocuses your attention on things that are more essential to your life.

As far as I know, it’s the only product of it’s kind. UNHOOKED works nicely with other tools you may use (like Moment), and people and therapists have been quite happy with the results.

I’d love to have UNHOOKED added to your resource list at https://humanetech.com/take-control/ if possible.

Thanks,

[willmattei]

2-3 minute read

Hi everybody!

My name is Will – I’m a recent college graduate and programmer from California. Last year I kept track of how I was spending my time and was shocked to discover that I browsed the web for 7 hours per day on average. I was even more surprised when I told my friends and family about my findings and most of them said they also spent that much time online. Many of them confided that their tech habits were negatively impacting their lives.

This motivated me to do something about internet addiction. I built a browser extension that lets people block websites they want to stop wasting time on. When users visit websites they’ve blocked, the program redirects them to a page where they can see fun offline activities they can do instead. All the activities are currently open, near the user, and don’t require reservations. People can also filter activities based on things like budget and travel time.

I’ve launched my project on www.foundoff.com but it is still in its early stages. Only activities in the SF Bay Area are listed and the website is not designed for mobile. (However, I released an Android app called Foundoff which displays activities like the website; an iOS version is in the works.) I can also post direct links to the Chrome and Firefox versions of my browser extension if anyone is interested.

I would love to get feedback about my project and I am even more interested to hear about everyone else’s ideas. I read all the introductory posts in this thread and I’m thrilled to see so many people who want to help this cause. Feel free to email me at willismattei@gmail.com if you want to brainstorm ways to tackle internet addiction.

Anyway, I need to go work on an important feature I’m aiming to launch in the next 24 hours. Thanks for reading this and I’m excited to meet you all!

[benjathuil]

[Reading time : 3 - 4 minutes]

Hi everyone !

My name Ben and i am very happy to join this community, and too see how active it is!
I wish i could dedicate more time to it, but it’s already a beggining.

I am in love with the platform, its small design features that make it so respectful, from the unique onboarding to the casual message editor. I decided to use the so-much-convenient [details] options for making my presentation more digest !

Generalities and activity🔮

I am Benjamin, a 25yo french social entrepreneur, based in Paris.

I launched founded what we call CareGame : video games that finance charities.
From my frustration of the time (I) spent playing video game probably, and quite clear-sighted (read: disillusioned), I try to make this time useful for our society as a whole : making donations to NGOs simply by having fun.(Besides, video games can be great from elsewhere, too ! educational, inspiring, artistic, …)

We launched a first mobile trivia game called Le Schmilblick that donates 15% of its revenues to charities : even playing for free, advertising helps financing environment, education healthcare or inclusion non-profits. It has had 60k downloads…and counting!

Now we want to scale this and enable any mobile game to structurally donate to charities, without cutting their revenues (using blockchain, too). More info on www.caregame.com. We are always open to new talents, so if you’re interested, ping me !

More Background 🏠

I grew up in Paris, i graduated in a great business school called ESSEC. Also did an exchange program with Copenhaguen Business School. I enjoyed so much the campus life that i was president of its student club during one year - and was also involved in more than 6 student clubs (see: “Passions” ️)
i did a 6month internship in a digital marketing startup in Palo Alto, which triggers my interest for social entrepeneurship
I had the chance to travel a lot : 2 months in Bolivia/Peru, 1 in Brazil, India, Morocco several times, and many places in our lovely small Europe.
I live with 4 amazing roomies in East Paris
I’m an ENFP (MBTI personalities scheme)

Passions 🎈

• I love graphic design, and learned Photoshop and Illustrator back in my early student years. Enough to manage having fun, most of it stored on my blog ️http://benjathuil.tumblr.com/
• I enjoy art, food, wine, cheese, photography, nature
• I’m very interested in the media sphere, how it’s evolvling
• French politics of course fascinate me. I’m a deep supporter of another system for election (“Vote par jugement majoritaire”). I took part in a local election movement.
• I also enjoy hunting, even if i’m trying to be vegetarian for ecological reasons.
• I’m organizing with friends a no-phone retreat with ~100 people to enjoy life

Why I am here 🙄

To feel less alone fighting for a #TechForGood movement, no feed my brain with great ideas from all over the world. To meet very interesting people? To share from small tips to deep debate about our world and how tech impact our lives.
I try to be active here in my spare time and would be happy to organize a Meetup in Paris, or at least to organize something with the community here (see: France Chapter / Meetups)

Cheers !

[Mari]

Hi all. I’m Marietta Angelottti, a mom and family doctor who majored in philosophy of mind undergrad. I remember long nights in the 1980s avoiding studying by playing Rogue using I think arpanet? Fast Forward to my own child and giving her a smart phone (can we pukeeze change that term?!?) at age 11. What a big mistake! I discovered Melanie Hemp first and now Tristan. I am completely in for any work to change how tech is hurting children and male female relationships.

[HansP]

Hello, Hans here. Netherlands based photographer and previously an international industrial engineer.
I’ll do some reading here firstly, but would like to add visual content showcasing the problems at hand (no pun).
For me the good old “a picture is worth a thousand words” is as valid today as it was at any time.

Great to see so many already gather p here!!

[Jamchiller]

Hi everyone!

I’m Jared and I’m a UX Designer based in London, UK.

I’ve had an interest in Humane Technology for a long time - before I was a UX Designer, I worked at a digital agency in their Innovation team, looking at ways that we could help retailers to use technology to engage their customers in-store and online. Through this I came across many technologies that I found had the power to either empower the customer or empower the retailer, but rarely do both. I found myself making hard decisions about whether a new technology was actually being used to improve the customer’s experience or to improve the ability for the brand to predict and control user behaviour.

I also came across many suppliers of these technologies who I found fairly morally bankrupt, who were excited about the ways we could monitor customers more and more without any thought about the ethical implications of this.

I moved into UX because I wanted to improve my ability to influence these problems from a design perspective and be able to speak with authority on what was ultimately ‘good’ and ‘bad’ from the users’ perspective. I realise now that to talk about what is ultimately ‘good’ for a user not only requires knowledge of the technology, but also consumer behaviour, marketing, business, psychology, and on a deeper level, philosophy. What, in the end, constitutes ‘good’ for the user? It’s a big question that is perhaps impossible to answer with any sort of certainty.

I would love to meet up with other Humane Tech enthusiasts in London and perhaps create a meet-up. I’m looking at putting together a talk that I can give at various meetups to raise awareness of Humane Tech and would love to collaborate with others to make it happen.

Thanks and send me a message if you’d like to meet for a coffee!

Thanks,
Jared (you can find me on Twitter at @jamchiller)

[shohei]

Hello everyone!

I’m Shohei, currently living in Germany but soon relocating to my old home of Dayton, Ohio USA. I work as a mechanical engineer during the day, while doing some web development in the spare time.

It’s very exciting to become a part of this community of people who are doing some great things to fight digital distraction. Me… I am passionate about the mission but I have not done anything yet. Finding this community has really inspired me though, so I’m really excited to learn from people here and find ways I can contribute.

As a programmer I hope to build things on the web that is a positive alternative to all the addictive places we all go to. More importantly though, I want to help build awareness. It’s about the people who are not in this community. How can we get them to be curious and be looking for the impact of digital distraction in their lives? Because once they see it, they will start to look for solutions that work for themselves. That’s better than any apps or products we can provide them.

Anyway… nice to meet you all and hope to see some of you away from the screen!

[Azalus]

Hi there, I live in Berlin now. Used to work as senior Information Architect and User Experience Expert in London, working on all kinds of commercial IA/UX projects before I left the UK. Worked also for Museums, Newsplatforms, Community Projects, Research etc. Come from the humanities & arts.

I had my data abused in the UK, know a lot about being a victim of hacking and how data manipulation works. I am lucky to be a German citizen and was able to leave the bloody UK. That Cambridge Analytica comes out of the UK does not surprise one bit.

In the last years I dived into Islamic philosophy and science, as Islamic Science and Philosophy is the original inventor of Algorithms and thought a lot about the “virtual” (wandering in landscapes). Manipulation is nothing new… I built a successful blog about these issues and I think it is time to bring this to a much wider attention, what Islamic Science and thought can do to help the current manipulation crisis. It may also heal a lot of inter-cultural wounds…

[susie2609]

I just listened to Tristan Harris on the Vanity Fair Inside the Hive podcast and, as a result, found myself here on the CHT site. The interview was a great call-to-action!

I have a (distant) background in marketing - corporate life during the beginnings of the internet seem so quaint and simple in retrospect! - and more recently have been teaching English Lit and Information Literacy to secondary school students.

I listened to Tristan speak about the urgency of change required within the tech industry. I strongly believe that educating our young people about the realities and motivations of the companies behind their favourite apps will be key in bringing about awareness, understanding and behavioural change.

I would love to see an information package created, with secondary school students in mind, that unpacks the issues Tristan spoke about during the podcast - the quest to own user’s attention, the harvesting of personal data and how it’s used, the real-world consequences of these unregulated actions. Young people have a great capacity for understanding and for forming strong opinions based on evidence and facts. They are our best hope for change.

[nate]

Hi, all

I’m a modern troubadour (nomadic storyteller and singer-songwriter), Getting Naked With Nate podcast host and 100% Patreon-supported online creator (one of the top 100 musicians on Patreon globally).

I am also destructively addicted and disempowered in my relationship to tech and social media.

My creativity has plummeted over the last few years because of my lack of ability to focus, whether on songwriting, practising music or planning projects. I’ve also developed severe neck and back issues from being overly sedentary for so many years (computer, guitar, reading, tech, gaming, etc), so much so that at the moment I can’t play much guitar or tour.

I feel, in some ways, like the owner of a bar who is also an alcoholic: My business is my drug.

There are shifts I have been making, but it feels like an ongoing, very challenging battle:

• I use the Moment and Freedom ios apps to remind me how much time I spend on my phone and guilt trip me into getting off it .
• I am living on a farm with my lady, taking lots of long walks, doing a bit of gardening…and planning big changes like learning skills which will make me money while keeping me outside and active (things like surf instructing, movnat personal training, etc).

It feels like the cards have been stacked against me in the past. Tech always available, always another reason to be online, lots of indoor solitude and the ever-present excuse of being an online creator (I must reply to comments, I must livestream).

Now I’m focused on stacking the cards so that a healthy relationship with myself, my loved ones, my work and my environment are more likely.

Hope this all makes sense and would love to hear any thoughts on how to work at the addiction and lack of control I experience around tech and social media.

Thanks everyone
Nate

[Daneg]

Hi all. My Name is Daniel Egger and I was working in different roles and structures with innovation in the last 15 years. The last 5 years I am strongly looking into designing for humans and with humans and also understanding emotional unbalanced behaviors in the present and future.

Currently I am working to create a new form of wearable that helps to balance peoples lives, understand better their good moments and guide their “emotional” well-being.

I use my experience to create new calm technologies that add high value to people, though without overtaking their attention, breaking rituals or being in the center of all attention. I love technology and I believe in a progressive technology future BUT also highly human focused.

To share experiences theoretical as practical how to implement such solutions is highly important to me and I appreciate the opportunity to exchange ideas with other people who joined this movement of humanetech.

[KermitO]

Hello,

I am Kermit, a writer and teacher. I am most interested in humane tech around privacy and agency for myself and my students - that is, mindfully deciding where we devote my attention.

I quit Facebook at least 7 years ago, recognizing it for the blight that it is. I gave up Twitter several months ago. And I’ve never seriously used Instagram, because it seemed too personal from the start.

Google has proven a lot harder to shake, primarily because of how I use it in the classroom: as a EdCMS, and for easier logins for students, who aren’t great at remembering passwords.

I am interested in promoting everything we’re talking about here within my personal circles and with my students. I’m already recognized as a polemical privacy evangelist, so adding some invectives about the attention economy will be simple enough.

[Apiner]

Hello everyone,
My name is Joseph Piner and I am very happy I found this community. The very subject of technology and where we are going with this has been a concern of mine for the last 4 years. As a documentary filmmaker I try to produce films that will make a difference and promote change. I am very happy to introduce our new documentary film called Electronic Crack. This film explores our addiction to our devices and social media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgn73bA_gis
www.electroniccrack.weebly.com

[TomKrishna]

Hello everyone,

I’m Sean from Singapore. I am currently serving my country’s military as a conscript and am planning to study in The Netherlands next year. I am passionate about the mindful use of technology and hope that in future, I can get involved in work that promote it. I have spent a good quarter of my life being a video game and technology addict, and can attest to the detrimental effects that unmindful Internet use can have on our cognitive health. I am also a fan of Aldous Huxley’s books - my favourites are Island and Brave New World.

Now more than ever, we need to raise a global awareness of how important mindful use of technology can save our dwindling attention spans and relationships. There is no way we can revert to a pre-Internet consciousness, but we can all work towards reclaiming ownership of our thoughts, attention and relationships.

I hope to learn plenty from all of you here!

[patm]

Japanese female born in Fukuoka-ken. Mom of three cats: Umbra, Candace, and Matsu. Author/editor of four books, including Bedeviled, a novella about a man who becomes addicted to Internet sites and is investigated in connection with a crime. Managing editor of international literary journal. Leo born in year of the dragon. Grammar and punctuation activist. Proud and happy member of this forum.

[gino]

Hello, I’m Gino. I’m also an actor and writer in Chicago. I’m also the owner of a technology consulting company, so technology is my “real job”. I’ve studied human computer interaction in college and always had an interest in the impact of technology on society. As an actor, it’s my business to understand human behavior and invariably how and why we feel what we feel. I’m very interested in using theater as a medium to explore the topic of device addiction and the impact of technology on our society. I am here largely for inspiration for scenes that I am interested in writing on this topic.

I have two main soapbox issues/insights about social media and its vaunted mission to “bring us closer together”. They are largely arguments for why social media, is ill-suited for socializing and relationship building:

1. The sum of our online persona is generally an “exhibit” of ourselves that we cultivate. But this is not the equivalent to the nuanced reality of a person, warts and all. Being with someone in person communicates more about them than they consciously project. What are we losing when people only get to know the version of ourselves that omits our blind sports or the inconvenient truths that our body language would otherwise reveal? How is friendship impaired when it becomes ever more difficult to peek at what lies underneath our own self-produced facades of artificial harmony.

2. There are certain things in life that are meant to take time, be inconvenient and difficult. Our persistence in face of that difficulty is how we express the importance of the thing to us. Making time and spending effort are necessary components to relationship building that social media seeks to eliminate by making it “easier”. It purports that it will convenience what is normally effortful. But it is the spending of effort that cultivates the love that we have—and also demonstrates that love to another person. When we love, we are showing someone that they are worth our one, most precious and finite resource: our time. How can we decrease the amount of time and effort invested in a relationship without decreasing the interest we have in that relationship? We may be able to fool parts of ourselves for a little while, but in the end our consciences know the difference and it becomes evident in the relationship.

[jarednewman]

Hey all — my name is jared newman. I’m a research analyst at betaworks in NYC, trying to make venture investments in ethical technology. If you’ve got a project you’re working on, you can reach me at jared (at) betaworks (dot) com!! I’m also an avid reader of fiction and long distance runner.

[lydialaurenson]

Hello everyone!!

My name is Lydia and I’m currently working half-time at CHT to help with content, comms, and operations. (With the other half of my time, I oversee the magazine for The Battery, which is an arts/culture/philanthropy club in San Francisco.)

Once upon a time, I was a weird internet kid playing MUDs in the 1990s. From there, I worked in game design (most prominently White Wolf Game Studio) before moving into writing/activism about sex and gender issues. During the time that I was doing activism, I served in the Peace Corps and established a blog that eventually became semi-famous (pseudonym Clarisse Thorn). So, for a while I was supporting myself doing writing/speaking about sexuality and gender issues – basically, my blog became an internet business, except I never wanted to do advertising or sponsorships so it was hard to support myself :).

Around 2012-2013, I moved to San Francisco and transitioned into working in technology, focused on media (both social media and journalism). I worked with a lot of different startups and some larger companies – both doing content/comms, and learning to do product/user research.

I was very fortunate to meet Tristan in 2013 and have been tracking his work ever since, and I was very happy to start working with CHT in early April. I strongly believe that this is an organization that should exist and I’m excited to see how it develops. Right now, the main project I oversee is the Ledger of Harms (this is a project to track and examine the negative externalities of technology) and we are hiring a Research Assistant – I’m about to post about that in Announcements! We’d love to get referrals from you all! I’m new to the forums but excited to see how many people are here!!

[mapc]

Hi, I’m Martin.
I’m a PhD student of Human of Social Dimensions of Science and Technology (a.k.a. Science and Technology Studies) in Arizona State University. I’m originally from Chile, and my research focus in the construction of mechanism to understand technologies. I’m working in elaborate a model about technology appropriation (how a tech system and a human incorporate each other). My current study case also elaborate some conditions about an skill called “technology awareness”, that is typically understood as the skill to hack technological systems and take advantage of them (from computer-based to life-hacks, because all of them are technologies).

[unfiltered_sunlight]

Hello everyone,

Uvanga Apausuk, Kivaliniqmi. My Inupiaq name is Apausuk, and my relatives on my Inupiaq side are from Kivalina (a tiny community in NW Alaska that President Obama almost visited but didn’t (Air Force One was too large for their airstrip)). My English name is Jennifer. I am currently a stay-at-home mother who has chosen this temporary path so that I can give my children the best start in life possible - with a present mother. I am imminently poised to re-enter the professional world as either a grant writer/administrator, a museum professional or both - while apprenticed to an herbalist, and planning for my graduate degrees. I am also a classically trained singer who sings with Anchorage Opera. Finally, I am the daughter of a retired humanities computing professor; I once had the intention of becoming a computer programmer, but chose the path of anthropology, music and healing instead.

The string that draws me into a group such as this one is my belief that technology has a definite place, but it should not overly dominate our lives; nor should it take over. My interest in healing and true health informs my view that surrounding yourself with glowing, ADD-trending, socially isolating screens isn’t ideal health. True health can involve technology-dependent work and a limited amount of connecting online, but then must be balanced by a greater amount of connecting in person, getting out and breathing fresh air, eating locally-grown food that is as close to nature as possible (ie, without GMOs, pesticides, hormones, etc.), meditation and the like.

I am appalled by the fact that, although I was an adult when Facebook crept onto the scene, I cannot entirely remember what it was like not to be constantly checking my phone for the latest updates on Facebook or distractions on Pinterest or Flipboard or in my email or text inboxes. I have consciously tried to divorce myself from these things - especially because I have two young children under 4 - but I find doing so a great challenge. I realize that people might think it “woo-woo” to be concerned about EMFs (electromagnetic frequencies), but having a cell phone so close to my own body and that of my children’s concerns me greatly - WiFi is not of nature, and anything not of nature eventually takes its toll on the human body (and other natural beings on this Earth), as it/they was/were not built to exist with such things.

Although Alaska, with its vast distances, is greatly helped by technology in many ways, I am very interested in anything that can help me reclaim my life from technology and reinstate me as its master. I would love to be a part of this like-minded community, and would also love to help “think tank” a way forward.

With all best wishes, quyana. Thank you for your time and attention.

Jennifer Apausuk