I am the CEO and founder of a social networking startup which started with the belief in ideologies similar to those laid by Humane Tech. We started ideation before Humane Tech became a thing. Last time when I was at the landing page the community was still nascent and not much was available but now it seems it is growing and will soon catch a wider audience’s attention.
My startup’s name is 8hoot, we are building a social network which encourages online interactions that facilitate in-person interactions. I hope to help drive this movement through the resources we have and inculcate these ideologies in the product and services we are and will be providing to our users.
Greetings - I realize I’ve posted on the forum for some months but have neglected to introduce myself - my apologies. I’ll rectify that now - especially as I realize how helpful others’ introductions are to me in getting a sense of who is a part of this remarkable community.
My name is Karen and I’m a Washingtonian with a long career working on social policy and practice issues at the national level in the U.S., mostly in the nonprofit sector but also as a consulting partner to and with NGOs (including national nonprofits, think tanks and philanthropic foundations) and public sector organizations, including government agencies (mostly state and local jurisdictions), associations of public sector agencies. I’ve always described my areas of work, passionate interest and expertise as eclectic - I have graduate training in human and organization development (how people, groups, organizations and systems learn and change) and have extensive experience in optimizing the functional dimensions of organizations and systems, culture, innovation, all in alignment with mission and values.
In terms of issue areas, I have worked for decades on issues of economic and social inequality and mobility, race and gender equity, public health and human services (well-being). I am a lifelong student of applied neuroscience / cognitive science and its application in a range of areas, from the neuroscience of communication and effective framing to working with people and groups who have experienced trauma and the impact of traumatic stress on executive function and resilience.
My early (undergraduate) education was focused on history, political theory and social and political movements. I am a reader and a perennial learner, as well as an amateur and avid pastel painter. I am married to the most remarkable human I know - and he shares many of my interests, including my deep concern over the direction our culture and society is taking. We read and are seeking to engage at the intersection of technology and its impact on attention, cyber and the role of computational propaganda, technology and its role relative to race and economic and social inequities - and a number of other topics that converge as a part of what we are most concerned about and hoping to write about and talk about with others.
I will close by saying that more than half of my maternal grandmother’s extended family were murdered in the Holocaust, and my experience with that aspect of who I am has always informed my ways of being in the world - and it informs my deepest possible concern about the rising tide of fascism in the US and around the world. This is - to be clear - not expressed as a concern for my own safety first and foremost, but as a horror at the dehumanization of children, families and communities by our government and other governments and non-state actors around the world. I’m grateful to this community for all I’ve learned thus far and for the hope I find in our discourse. Oh - and I have been off all social media since November 2016, and have had my sense that something was deeply wrong there confirmed and explained by much of what I’ve read - and I’m still learning.
Hi, fellow parents! I too quite social media. Even though I’m in media and marketing, I have no regrets whatsoever.
Ironically, I’m typing away on this while my son and I are collaborating on a musical theatre piece. He’s using my iPhone to record a new song and listen to it, taking notes. Clearly we use technology. We just don’t want to be swallowed by it.
I’m also partnering with Kid Made Camp to teach kids how to enjoy entrepreneurship – without much technology.
Hi, I’m Boyd Collins, and I’ve been working as a web developer for about 25 years. As someone who creates software, I’ve become more and more concerned at the invisible ideology baked into software design. According to current spoken and unspoken guidelines, it is supposed to know what the user wants better than he/she does. Software has apparently become so successful at supporting human objectives that many are now convinced it should formulate the objectives themselves. I’ve started investigating how this ideology shapes our practice and impacts our experience of personhood. Jaron Lanier’s book “You are Not a Gadget” has been a guiding light in this regard, but I’m just getting started and I would really like to be a part of a wider conversation. I would especially like to hear about other’s findings on how social media and related software tools that tend to define personhood in a downward direction - instead of making software more human, encouraging humans to act more like software. I look forward to working with and contributing to this much needed community.
my name is Marcus, i live near Frankfurt, Germany.
I consider myself an emo activist (as in eco activism, only dealing with emotional health).
I strive to address and combine all aspects of emotional degeneration:
stress driven collective aggression
empathy loss
low self esteem
digital communication (as in digital dopamine or humanetech.com)
de-socialization
contemporary culture degeneration
paleo clash (our genes conflicting with today’s lifestyle)
time compression
etc.
Challenges:
There is no actual broad social emotional health movement so far, there is not even a word for it.
There are only a few relevant organizations/websites:
effectivealtruism
cfar
lesswrong
schoolofthought
etc.
I believe forces have to be joined to finally form a relevant social movement with
at least the same scale of the environmental movement that started in the early 80s.
My main question:
What are other relevant websites/groups/activists?
Do you know additional concepts or terms that help to describe emotional health issues?
I spend a lot of time gathering concepts like time compression to clarify issues.
Hi,
I’m Paula from the Fairphone Community.
Just heard of this community through @aschrijver’s post here.
From browsing this forum a bit I see it concentrates more on the software side than the hardware side of technology. I didn’t find a lot of topics about Fairphone’s core principles here:
conflict free & fair mining
working conditions
circular economy
But to be fair even on the Fairphone forum we talk a lot about software. You can run the Fairphone almost completely without G%§$e or any other big company’s software that spies on you.
Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Sharbaugh, I’m a strategic designer and facilitator living in Portland, OR. Much of my work is with the Pittsburgh-based LUMA Institute, where I help organizations around the world (Accenture Global, RTI International, Allstate, Owens Corning, Standard Chartered Bank, the Knight Foundation, and many others) learn how to use human-centered design in the service of innovation and build more human-centered products and services. I organize the Portland Community Design Thinkers Meetup group, and I’m an ethnographic researcher and design lecturer in the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s Executive MBA program in Australia. I’m quite keen to meet you all especially any of you in the Pacific Northwest – and work toward creating bottom-up pressure to meet this enormous challenge.
Hello! Oscar, 24, born and living in northern Italy.
When I graduated in Media Design, my aspirations were not aligned with my current values. I’m lucky to have had the time and space to question myself and, although I’m way far from having it all figured out, I’m eager to start my very own life.
I feel it’s my responsibility to try to be a good human being.
I’d like to land a job that cherishes humane values and aims to steer technology in a better direction. That’s why I’m putting my savings on a coding bootcamp; I hope training as a developer will grant me some degree of flexibility in the process of looking for my ideal job.
Hello y’all. My name is Siddhi Upadhyaya. I am a high school senior from the Bay Area. I love math and programming, and have been an advocate for STEM subjects and project based learning for four years. The reason my interest in this movement developed is because I started to realize how much data companies are collecting on people, and how unaware kids in my age group are of this issue. I am very open to public speaking and want to create a way to engage Digital Natives in realizing they can take control back from tech companies. I understand both the “parent” and “teenager” sides of the debate on how much technology is too much, and want to help bridge the gap!
My name is Marek Bednarik and I am a Slovakian guy living in Czech Republic in Brno / South Moravia region. I have spent some times in Netherlands and in USA during my work career.
My professional background is industrial automation / controls / electrical systems engineering and I have participated on green field project in Slovakia and Czech Republic led by big international corporate. I was never member of any social network, somehow I intuitively felt that it is not a good idea even when I was forced heavily many times and from many sides. But I do have some personal experiences with online distractions and its negative impact on mindfulness and focus. I think social media and new technologies generally have a lot of great features and not use them at all is not a solution. Maybe I do not have perfect background but I believe I will find a way how to fit and be useful. I like learning and self development and I think this is a great platform to apply these aspirations.
I think this is a great and needed initiative as we have to learn ourselves how wisely use these new powerful technologies. Especially if development of new things is so fast we have to stop, calm down and think about consequences, set up appropriate rules and policies in order to do not destroy ourselves and our vulnerable descendants. AI, VR and other disruptive things are here and they will be much more persuasive as social media, phones and browsers. Any kind of power without knowing how to use it properly and safely is destructive by its nature. And it is not just fire anymore…as fire can destroy and burn out a house, village, area etc. but not whole planet and if so it will take a while so we can react somehow… Upcoming (and current as well) technologies have this ability (destroy whole civilization, silently and gradually), so I prefer to learn ourselves how to use it properly before is too late. I am so glad that there is so many enlightened people who wants to provide a realistic solution.
So my intention is to help community, develop myself (as there is a lot of great and inspirative people in this platform) and bring this initiative to Central Europe region as majority of population does not speak English.
My name is Callum Kearney, and I work on understanding the mental health impact of this movement on society.
I attended Wisdom 2.0 and was lucky to be part of a spontaneous breakout session
I work at Tidy Minds, and we are a co-operative of scientists, creatives, and writers, working to further the mission of Time Well Spent by specifically focussing on research intelligence, consulting to the media, and building out a nonprofit publication to document this incredible movement towards replenishing society.
Please reach out to me directly on callum@tidyminds.org if you are interested in:
Contributing to the publication
If you need to be armed with more research/information to help progress this movement in your organisation and projects
Wanting a destination to tell your story, and impact that you’re having
I have just finished reading through 473 fascinating introductions! My name is Farley Duvall and I am another person concerned about privacy and the Surveillance Economy that Shoshona Zuboff and Roger McNamee have been writing about.
Ironically, I grew up in Menlo Park (HQ of Facebook!) and watched tech transform the Bay Area. Studied at Cal Berkeley, and spent two decades working with large and small tech firms before moving to Europe and launching my own advisory firm. I have been an early adopter of all things tech! Hardware/software/services… After moving to Europe, Facebook became a great tool for keeping in touch with friends and family. We ran our business on Google platforms; Gmail, Docs, GoogleVoice… the list goes on and on. More than 10 yrs ago, I starting hearing that if you aren’t paying for it, then YOU are the product. But I didn’t yet conflate FREE with my privacy! It was too easy to say, “What do I have to hide…” But a few years ago, I did figure out that if “nothing to hide" is my answer, then I was asking myself the wrong questions about what privacy, and more specifically MY privacy means.
In fact, in 2017 I became so concerned that I joined a company that has created a privacy platform, www.idka.com . I hope it is ok to mention this in my introduction!
We are always looking for like-minded people to talk about apps like the Brave Browser, DuckDuckGo, Qwant… And we hope Idka can be mentioned in the same discussions, as there are not enough social or collaboration networks that have been built with privacy as a fundamental principle.
Hey, I’m Brian and like many others here I come from the tech world. Spent past 7 years designing and building software for startups and large corporations. Several things coincided that led me to “waking up”, one of which was seeing a close friend’s mental health deteriorate so publicly on social media. Unfortunately, we were all too late and it led to her psychotic break.
Still, I’m an optimist and believe, given the right incentives, technology can be more closely aligned with human values. Recently, I’ve been taking inspiration from Joe Edelman’s work w/ Human Systems: https://medium.com/what-to-build
At the moment, I’m interested in how we can leverage art and technology to cultivate greater states of mindfulness. One less confused person in the world, is one less confused person in the world.
Given the nascent stage of where we’re at with this movement, I think our highest impact opportunity lies in education to increase awareness of the harms in technology.
HI, everyone! My name is Becca and I live in Central California, far enough away from Silicon Valley not to be part of it, but as a state we are certainly influenced by the tech industry. I am interested in the varied responses and information from all the tech people here!
I worked in the medical field before I became a mom. My primary concern is the overwhelming tech in schools, especially the 1:1 programs aimed at younger and younger children and the overall well-being of our children at the expense of tech and academic progress. I find it disturbing and, frankly, repellent to go into a classroom and see kids with headphones on staring at a screen like zombies.
I am not alone, but it can feel that way. We just need to be a bit louder : )
My name is David Ryan Polgar. Scrolling through the long list of people, I see a bunch of familiar names and excited to be part of the community. I run an organization called All Tech Is Human that is based in NYC. We held an ethical tech summit last October, and have upcoming gatherings in Seattle (May 18), San Fran (Sept 21), and NYC (Nov 9). The aim to unite a broad and inclusive group of technologists, advocates, artists, academics, students, org leaders, and other interested parties to tackle the thorniest issues facing tech (attention economy, algorithmic bias, inclusive design, wellbeing).
I’ve been in the tech ethics space since about 2012 (background as an attorney + college prof), so it has been thrilling to see such a dramatic shift in thinking. I have experience that crossing into academia, industry, orgs, media, and general “thought leadership,” so I have a pretty broad 360 perspective. Over the years I have worked with the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction (with Dr. David Greenfield, who pioneered the field in the 90s), founded a conference called the Digital Citizenship Summit (held at Twitter HQ a few days before the US election & talking about media literacy…), writing, speaking, consulting. I am a board member for the CA non-profit #ICANHELP, which empowers teens to delete negativity online, along with a few other groups focused on social media and mental wellbeing.
Outside of All Tech Is Human, a podcast/live show I do called Funny as Tech (where we deal with tech ethics…inside a comedy theater), and consulting/speaking, I am always looking to connect and collaborate. Please reach out!
Hi All. I’m Gokulakrishna. You can call me Gokul to address in short form I’m from India. I’m @gkrishnaks on other online accounts. Glad to be here in this community and look forward to contributing!
Pronouns : he/him.
Hi. I’m Leslie and have been working as a librarian/information professional for nearly 26 years. I have been a witness to the “digital divide” which, I believe falls into the category of humane technology. I have seen children, teens and adults virtually addicted to their devices. I myself went through a period where I spent a lot of money on an online game (live and learn) and I do not have addictive tendencies. I believe modern technology preys on the loneliness of individuals who will do anything to stay connected–somehow. The breakdown of community and family has been documented in books such as “Bowling Alone”, which was written a while back but is more relevant today. I am not a “tech” person but need to advise and troubleshoot at work. I am concerned about the misuse of AI and find a Google-controlled home frightening. OK, so I do ask Alexa for the weather forecast and music once in a while. I want to hear what more technologically oriented folks think the solutions to these issues and how to make technology a tool only, not a terrible manufactured need.
Hi, I’m a late bloomer.
My name is Ryan. My wife and I own a modestly successful Interior Design business but you wouldn’t want me decorating your home. I’m responsible for the back-office stuff, like marketing (which I love) and accounting (which I hate.) She does all the pretty stuff.
I think a lot of late bloomers are idealists, skeptics, dreamers, and, basically, lazy. As a result, they’ve got serious trust issues, an area where I’ve earned a six-degree black belt. Got a picture of me, yet?
As if that weren’t enough, I’m a patriot. I don’t carry a gun in every pocket or have a flag and six bumper stickers on my car but my greatest heroes are the founding fathers, whom I admire warts and all. I think they were radical social entrepreneurs who risked their lives for principles that occupy the position in our society next to “Urban Myths.” Like the FFs, I believe the greatest threat to democracy is ignorance, and there is a whole lot of that going around right now. (queue Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime)
My current extracurricular projects include: an essay, “Everyone is a Victim,” on why the public lynching of Harvey Weinstein on social media stripped him of the right of the presumption of innocence and the moral implications for our society; a strategy for combating the obesity epidemic that features a movie script and the Department of Health and Human Services rolling out a new mascot, the Grim Reaper (It could work–look what Smokey the Bear did for forest fires!); and working on my marriage–did I mention my wife and I work together!
At digi.me we are pleased to share our full vision as per link below. Digi.me is not a plan - we exist today and people are building apps on 100% private, fully secure and consent based architecture where teh individual owns their data and digi.me is their tool (and we don;t see, touch or hold user data - ever).
I’m from India. I’m