Hi i’m Drew. To pay the bills, I have done test automation for 20+ years on many types of applications. So I have seen the morphing and twisting of some areas of tech into an insidious sales tool. For some time, I have been concerned by the manipulative and inequitable nature of social media. In 2014 I tried to start a campaign called ‘A penny a follower’ where people with 10k plus followers have remuneration given to a charity of their choice. (If we can get 10 celebrities to ask for this, it could still work!).
The power of online global communities is undeniable and will ultimately serve mankind well. But it seems that too much power is in too few hands. Maybe a group such as the ‘Center’ can bring some balance back.
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Hi there,
Ehsan is here. I am a technologist and data scientist with a background in Machine Learning. I have worked with video games in the past and currently working with Amazon.
I have witnessed how video game companies use the most powerful Artificial Intelligence tools and AB test fiercely to sell more and make the products more sticky.
On one side, there is a belief that if the customer pays more, they are happier. Mathematically speaking Z = Revenue (or lifetime revenue - LTV). There is no limit, do whatever you can to increase revenue.
On the other side, neuroscience says the human brain can be trained such that it takes action against its own well being. In fact, that is how we develop depression and few other mental diseases.
Should we stop making our products more sticky and addictive? You might say, No, but we should consider the customer’s well being. Now the question is, how do we define the customer’s well being? Is it moral or possible to define such metrics?
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Hello!
I’m Yvette, the CTO of Meetup. I work everyday to try to figure out ways to use the smallest amount of software to get people to meetup in person and build real human connection in their local communities. The world needs human connection now more than ever. I have a 4 year old daughter and I’m going to do whatever I can to help create a world where she and her generation aren’t targeted in unethical and unregulated ways software companies.
Also, if the Center for Human Technology people would like to start a network of Meetup groups to help people meetup in person, instead of only virtually via this forum and a Facebook group…please do reach out!
Yvette
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Hi there, I’m Laure. I work as a Senior User Experience Researcher for Joya Communications. We make an app called Marco Polo. I’ve been interested in the intersection of humans, ethics, and technology for a while. In the past, I was the organizer for Copynight NYC and on the steering committee for Innovate/Activate, a conference about legal and human issues in tech, among other things. I currently organize a neuroscience Meetup in Portland as well as ProductTank PDX. I’ve recently been working on a Slack community with similar aims as Human Tech, at SUXS.es. In the past, I was a documentary person and was interested in the story side of evolving technology (@accelerations on Twitter). I’m a Canadian who’s spent many years now in the states.
I’m very excited to be a part of this community. As there work I do directly impacts people’s lives in this area, I’m hoping to learn and help ensure there are options to the advertising, behavioural data, and attention-sucking approaches to technology that are affecting us today.
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I’m a cultural anthropologist and educator and am so glad to have found the Humane Tech movement. Throughout my career, I’ve applied my anthropological lens to my students’ lived experiences, and I am worried about their wellbeing, as well as the health of our society at large.
I recently created and taught an anthropology course at Summit Public Schools -> It’s a Silicon Valley darling having partnered with Facebook for tech assistance. SPS has created an online platform system of education whereby students do ALL of their schoolwork through their computers. All of their resources, activities, and assessments are ultimately consumed through Chromebook screens. This method of education was extremely unsettling to me. My students not only interacted with screens during their classes but also during breaks and when they returned home. Screen addiction - diagnosable addiction - is now a common problem among our students. SPS’ goal is to incorporate its online platform into the majority of U.S. secondary schools in the very near future. It seemed to me that their mission of giving students access to high-quality, “personalized” learning has been cannibalized by SPS’ utter faith in the inherent goodness of ed. tech interventions in our schools. But MANY of us teachers (myself included) recognize how deference to tech is negatively affecting our students as learners and as human beings.
Having previously done my graduate studies with a focus on Korean society, I’m currently transitioning my career out of the classroom and back into research. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our modern lives, and moral concepts of time and productivity, are producing friction (Anna Tsing’s use of the term) with our corporeal, primate selves. How can we parse how we as organic beings within organic environments have created and used these technologies within the scope of our species’ social capacities? In other words, what are we capable of doing to ourselves, and what are the acute and chronic consequences as a species? Perhaps the ultimate question is: Why are we doing this to ourselves?
My gut has been pushing my focus toward a career where I can research assemblages of culture-specific ethics and internet-centric lived experiences. My bank account suggests I should apply my skillset to user experience research for the time being (TBD).
I’m in flux - and very glad to join this community, to find a home where I can learn from you all.
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Hi !
I quit Facebook on 26th March 2013 and I badly want to do something about this.
I can devote extensive amounts of time (upto 40 hours a week) to this project, for next 10 odd years or so, pro bono.
I had an eclectic professional life, part-time consulting for a startup, pays my rent currently.
Nemo Out,
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Bonjour All,
My name is Michael, and I created www.GetMotivatedBuddies.com as a direct response to the destructive nature of social media on our attention.
I’ve been passionate about the Time Well Spent Movement since I heard about it on Sam Harris’ podcast, because it’s existence validated and clarified what I had been articulating for many years.
Tim Wu’s book The Attention Merchants likewise did the same, putting our current attention economy into context.
As an actor and writer I had difficulty understanding why I had no difficulty hitting my marks in grad school (an acting conservatory) or in plays or films, yet when working alone on projects deeply important to me, I would yield to resistance, and distraction would take over my life.
As an adult I was diagnosed with ADHD, which helped me make sense of so many of my faults and strengths, but I still couldn’t reconcile how I could maintain hyperfocused attention so well in certain aspects of my life but not others that felt just as important.
It then struck me that in conservatory or on a collaborative project, my colleagues kept me accountable. If you slacked off, weren’t fully present bringing everything you had to a rehearsal, class, or performance, your classmates looked bad, fellow actors looked bad, the production looked bad; you let everyone down.
I realized in each of these circumstances, where I felt nothing would get in the way of accomplishing what was necessary, I was a member of a group, a group that assumed an identity and forced a much higher level of accountability than when on my own. (In fact, in grad school the names of each class were Group numbers: "Group 30, Group 31, etc.) Within this group identity it was obvious that my individual actions affected the entire group. So I, and most others, were hyper-mindful of our behavior, because we wanted to succeed.
Meanwhile, I’ve had a longstanding interest in neuroscience, and the relationship of the brain to behavior, and the majority of my life has been a study of behavior and motivation in many of their forms.
GetMotivatedBuddies is a community dedicated to reclaiming our time and attention for the behaviors we want to enact. As of now, you are matched with an accountability partner based on your preferences. But we are currently building out the system that integrates positive reinforcement, community, and gamification to help people measure their accountability in a friendly, competitive and group minded way. We are creating a measure of integrity, of trust.
Unlike Facebook, where your friends are really “fracquaintances”, and you’re manipulated to stay on the site as long as possible, distracting you from your life goals, we are building a community where you are rewarded for following through on your plans offline, and held accountable to those plans by a buddy working towards the same goals. If you let yourself down, you let them down.
We’re developing different kinds of relationships and dynamics of interacting, but the response from users has been dramatic. People are desperate for these kinds of meaningful relationships. Even though we’re more connected than ever many many people feel acutely alone, and are desperate for meaning.
This movement to reclaim our attention is the first step towards regaining a sense of meaning that so many of us have lost. Attention is the is the tool of consciousness. And when our attention is bought and sold, we lose the feeling of being conscious, of being alive. It’s time to start to live a little.
So on that note, Hello, I’m Michael!
p.s. We’re looking for people to join us, and could use help in various areas!
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David from London UK, SO PLEASED TO SEE THIS. We’ve been working here for a while on smartphone addiction.The schools here need to do more, the parents - hugely more - i.e. lead by example to our children before we can expect them to be healthy. Several of us here have sold our past UK companies to Dell, Accenture/Microsoft and we spotted Tristan’s work early. We’ve all got off our addiction and are helping others. We are also launching a no-ads, no-algorithms venture for content creators and professionals in media, have a read of Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin to see the other side of addiction, basically creativity/creators aren’t being paid enough, we the public are the product, the content is the commodity and the customers are brands. This is all part of the addiction ecosystem. Looking forward to helping with our Members of Parliament connections here to lobby in parallel perhaps?
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Mike from AUSTRIA. I am a software developer and it’s great to see such a project. I believe in tech for good reasons and obv I am interested in the humantech movement and I hope we see a lot of good things from this organisation. Maybe with the input of the community. Go for it!
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Hello, My name is Valère Fedronic, i am based in France.
I am an entrepreneur and privacy advocate, I work in cyber security with a main focus on user privacy. I am also a keynote speaker, and my main concern is how much consumers know about data harvesting, user tracking, and how much they are able to opt-out of it.
I am the founder of Facetts, we are currently helping communities that are facing discrimination and hate speech as well as algorithm discrimination by providing them safe places online where members can join without endangering their identity/integrity and get support. The plateforme is in beta and we are hosting communities around health issues (mental illness, food disorders), identity crisis, as well as unions or pokemon fans ;).You can learn more here https://www.facetts.com/en/manifesto
Thanks for your initiative, it is important to raise awareness on the downsides of the current internet model.
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Hi I’m Nancy and I’m not in the tech industry, but love your cause. I’m a medico in my late 50s, worked in public health for >35 yrs and have been trying to develop programs and strategies to help people change their lifestyle risk factors through primary care and community based initiatives. I still remember talking to people on public transport. I still remember people with a friendly smile in the streets and young people, kids being able to hold a conversation using sentences. I want to find real ways to make people really connect again. Not through this medium, only. So, I’d like to help and do more than just ban digital devices from our dining tables and bedrooms. 
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Hi, I’m Scott. Retired network and cyber security guy. Focused on applying cyber security concepts to information assurance in social networks. Its a whole new world out there, and keeps getting newer every day.
Hi! My name is Tracey. This movement resonates with me in a way few things have in the past few years. I often feel I’m not doing enough to improve the world, to make a difference, but I haven’t been able to latch onto anything big or important enough to put my full self into. This feels different. I think the issues championed by the center are among the most important issues of our time and need to be addressed head on.
I’ve worked at a variety of technology companies since the mid 80s–first as a technical writer, then as a software engineer–and it’s been quite a ride. I worked at the company that made the first internet browser for the Macintosh (TCP Connect II), at a company that made routers and modems, and at another company that made wide area network data sniffers. During this time, I participated in the One Laptop Per Child program (http://laptop.org/en/) and viewed the internet largely as a way to disseminate knowledge around the world. I was idealistic about the promise of the internet and believed that humanity would be elevated as a result of people working together to solve global problems.
After my first daughter was born (1999), I branched out into ecommerce (flexible schedule/remote location) and have been there ever since. It was fun for a long time, but it just makes me feel dirty now. I don’t want to do it any more.
I look forward to getting involved any way I can with this movement and hope that together we can make a difference.
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Hi all, thanks for getting the larger discussion started! I’m Dave Crusoe, and lead youth digital engagement for Boys & Girls Clubs of America. As many of you, my work is to apply psychology to user experience design to build great experiences.
The fun and relevance of my work is that the Boys & Girls Club experience - the youth, in-person experience at Clubs - is what I’m applying technologies to draw youth and teens to. That’s to say that as an application, I’d like to think of what we’re doing as a ‘humane technology’ inasmuch as we’re using digital badge/reward-driven encouragement to draw young people back to the social, in-person excitement at their local Clubs, rather than to draw them more deeply into solitary digital experiences.
I’d like to be involved in a few ways:
(1) From a human point of view, I have a strong interest in encouraging playful engagement with our physical spaces (see: https://medium.com/@davecrusoe/the-unshoveled-sidewalk-1396e08eb160 )
(2) From a design point of view, I’d like to engage the discussion about what humane and responsible technology use is, particularly for young people, and to drive my own design forward in this space and–
(3) From an education point of view, I’d like to help lead the charge in designing, developing and engaging educators about how to encourage adults and youth to apply responsible principles to their own technology use - a special challenge for its focus on behavior change.
Glad to be here & look forward to the conversations -
–Dave
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Hi! I’m Margot, based out of NYC. I worked in the tech team at Warby Parker for 5 ish years, and now I’m at Columbia University doing my masters in sociology (with a focus on social implications of emerging tech.)
It’s been fascinating delving into social theory texts about face-to-face interactions- Erving Goffman’s touch systems, Harold Garfinkel’s conversation analysis, symbolic interactionism in general- and orienting them / applying them to the digital / emerging tech world.
In fact (and forgive my shameless self-promotion) I’m in the midst of conducting ethnographic interviews with owners of voice-assistants (#Alexa.) Lmk if you’re in NYC / Seattle and want to be involved! 
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Hi, my name is Chris, I live in the UK and I work in Human Centred Technology design applied in the workplace, in particular SAP environments.
I’m concerned about the lack of consideration given to the ethics of technology design, so I’m really pleased to see this movement growing.
As a parent, I’d like to avoid future generations paying the price for us being slow to respond to the war on their senses.
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Hi, my name is Mark Little. I’m a former journalist/founder of the social news agency Storyful/former Twitter executive.
Last February, I met Tristan Harris at an event at Harvard and his insights helped shape this manifesto for an economy of trust in journalism. The concept of Time Well Spent was a key inspiration for me and my co-founder, Aine Kerr, when we created Neva Labs, which seeks to transform our experience of news from endless scroll to productive and empowering routine.
We want to find out what happens when each one of us takes control of the artificial intelligence that powers our news experience. How much more would we trust the news if it rewarded our attention rather than hijacked it?
Our question of this group is how can we take the principles of Time Well Spent and build them into the very DNA of a media start-up with global ambition? How can we ensure from the very earliest stages that we don’t make the mistakes of the architects of this social age? If we seek to rebuild trust by intelligent design, how do we also build business models aligned with that goal?
We look forward to exploring some of these questions with you all and finding practical answers. If we can be of help, or you can guide us with our work, let me know!! Mark
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Hi Yvette, just wanted to drop a line and thank you for your team’s great work at Meetup; I’ve met several new friends in person through it! I’d be down to help set up meetups for friends of CHT. I’m at aaron.chang02@gmail.com.
I’m also currently working on a tool to help wean people off their current smartphone use and encourage more meaningful interactions offline through other avenues and activities such as Meetup. Would love to chat offline to see if there could be some synergies!
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Hello everyone, I’m Alin Buda and I do UX/UI. I am a consultant working on various projects across few hot industries (fin-tech, healthcare, food, travel etc). A full bio can be found on www.alinbuda.com
Just let me know if I can help this community.
Thanks everyone and have a wonderful day!
Hi all. My name is Marc Atherton. I am a Behavioural Scientist working at the intersection of people, organisations and technology based in London. Having worked with psychographic profiling, behavioural micro-targetting and behaviour change I think that we need to create a more nuanced approach to the deployment of capabilities that many a tyrant would have loved. For me the Chinese Social Contract system, if deployed in its extreme form, poses a huge dystopian challenge to individuals and society so making sure we don’t sleepwalk into that future is something I am a real advocate of. Look forward to seeing where this venture takes us. When not doing that I yacht race, play alto sax and ride my Harley.
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