I am a senior charity executive based in the UK, and I have recently set up a social enterprise which I describe as an ethical community exclusively dedicated to celebrating and enhancing our experience of the world as it really is, as captured and shared by people from all over the world.
I see the internet as a watershed in history, but one that today has the potential to cause great harm to our societies and the values which underpin them, as well as to do a lot of good for humanity. We want to help it do the latter.
Ultimately I believe that weāre heading towards a situation where the internet must be seen not as a commodity but as part of our human patrimony, and it must be protected (NB I didnāt say āregulatedā) as such. And we can start building that future, now.
Iām looking forward to the London chapter meeting tomorrow.
Feel free to get in touch! ā¦And share some videos!
Hello! My name is Sophie and I joined this community recently I was so stoked to find you all!
I was born into a generation and an area of London that didnāt really have their first PC until the ages of 14-16 and even then, it was an activity usually only enjoyed on a rainy day.
I did not have my first smart phone until I was 21 years old. I am now 27 and finding it extremely hard to watch everyone around me allow it to completely consume them. I am getting tired of having to be constantly available and questioned as if there is a problem if I do not respond within the hour. I am getting tired of talking to people whilst they scroll through their phones. It is becoming a very lonely world.
My sister is 13 and is amongst the first generation to be a digital native. She is currently being treated for anxiety and depression as she struggles to socialise without her smartphone. This is something I am hearing about more and more so I am very appreciative to organisations such as this one that are striving for a healthier future with tech.
I do not work in tech nor am I a very tech savvy person. I have just graduated in music management but have started to rethink my career choices. I guess I havenāt worked that out yet, but I know I would like advocate a healthier approach with tech and help educate society on the detrimental impact it can have.
I now live in Southampton and was hoping to set up maybe some sort of group for people in the Hampshire area who would like to meet others and have discussions who also feel this way.
I will be attending the London meet up tomorrow, hope to meet some of you there
Hi everyone, very nice to meet you and find you all, truly.
My name is Rome Viharo. Iāve been deeply involved with media and technology since 2003, an early pioneer in viral media and social media marketing amongst other things.
As a designer and developer, I focus on the problems of digital advertising, content distribution, online harassment, misinformation, and consensus building.
I became deeply aware of the ad tech problem in 2011/2012. I had a small startup then that was acquired by a growing media company, and post-acquisition discovered they engaged in fraud. I became a whistleblower and helped expose a few bad actors back then. I was so traumatized by the discovery so since then have designed, coded and piloted Native Smart, an alternative to the current third-party eco-system. I look forward to sharing it when the time is right. Our website is just moving servers so will share in a few days.
Following Native Smart is aiki wiki, an emerging digital platform designed for trusted large-scale online consensus building between dozens, hundreds, or thousands of online users with different viewpoints on any topic, proposal, article, or study.
Through the process of negotiating an āaiki.wikiā, users collaborate to build a shared narrative which is then published as a perfectly vetted and trusted article, comprised in the true collaborative voice of the rational consensus.
Iām very eager to learn from you all and share ideas, very happy to be here! Iām located in Los Angeles.
Hi all! Iām Eve. Iām a student at NYU in an applied data science masterās program and previously worked in digital analytics. Since starting school Iāve been learning data science and machine learning. At the same time, Iām experiencing and learning about the negative impacts of social media on mental health, the deterioration of relationships at the hands of technology, privacy and ethics issues, etcā¦ the list goes on.
I hope to pursue a career where I can study and educate others about the implications of technology and artificial intelligence on society. Itās comforting to discover there are many others who share my concerns and who are proactively working to address the challenges ahead.
Looking forward to learning from you all and potentially meeting some New Yorkers in person!
Hi all, Iām Georgeādelighted this community exists.
The bio I just added to my profile does a pretty good job introducing me, I think. It reads:
Whoever you are, reading this, George loves you and is glad youāre here. George sees how easy it is for people to talk past each other (often without even recognizing it) as one of the most pressing issues currently facing humanity. Improving the media we use to communicateāonline social networks, email, etc., and even books, in-person conversation, and so onāis one of the key levers George thinks we can use to address this issue. George also thinks children make particularly good theorists, and have a key role in helping us craft a better medium.
To support this work, George created Intentions for Mac, an app that asks what you intend to do when you open your Mac, then checks in randomly to see if youāre doing what you meant: https://intentionsapp.com
More concretely, Iām a recent graduate of Swarthmore College, with a special major in Cognitive Science and Educational Studies. My senior thesis was titled āA Medium for Collaborative Thoughtā.
Thereās much more I could say, and Iāll leave it at that for now as I sense into how I want to orient towards this space and how it makes sense for me to engage here.
Hi, I am Konstantin, I live in Vienna, Austria and non-techy day job, but like to code and create stuff in my spare time. I was first made aware of the problem of tech influencing my life in various negative ways by Cal Newportās book āDeep Workā and then just fell down the rabbit hole and improving my life by sparing unhealthy technology ever since. I think this issue is one of the most pressing ones of our time so I am eager to devote time and effort to it.
Hello, my name is Marleen Spierings, I am a teacher of English in The Netherlands. Currently I am creating lessons and collaborative tasks for 17-18 year olds on digital information literacy within the Dutch curriculum K-11-K12, connecting it to persuasive essay writing and debate, among others. This forum, and the topics HumaneTech addresses seem like good lesson material to me. Any people out there willing to work with me on creating lessons? All in the public space, and open source, of course, in a good sharing tradition:)
Right onā¦ The techno-comfortable seem too often to think that more of what they like is good medicine for all. Iād want people living with dementia and all cognitve impairments to all be our canaries, as we will all age, and change, and have good odds of needing not yet present consideration.
Iām a senior Product Designer at Even, working on improving the financial wellbeing of all Americans. We design our app to impart both short-term usefulness and long-term transformational value. Now that my design decisions are affecting 100,000s of peopleās financial lives, Iām feeling the weighty, ethical responsibility to design in a way thatās as human-centred, effective, and inclusive as can be.
I believe human attention is sacred, and I am delighted to have found the CHTās thoughtful, action-oriented community by way of Joe Edelmanās Human Systems design class. Iām particularly interested in CHTās exchange with industry and contributing to a two-way design critique.
I used to seriously produce music and DJ, gearing up for a career in music. But at the events I threw, I found more meaning in seeing others enjoy the experience than being on stage myself. So while studying at Stanford University, I changed my focus from music to product design. I believe anyone who intentionally shapes human experiences over time is a designer.
Hey Eve! I am based in NYC and do a bunch at the intersection of mental health and social media, if you would like to get in touch. dpolgar@gmail.com / DavidRyanPolgar.com
I serve as the chaplain at a large residential addiction recovery program in Baltimoreā¦ Iāve long been wrestling with the promises and perils of screen tech in my own life, and Iām wanting to incorporate humane tech principles and practices into the classes and groups I lead.
If you or someone you know is working in the recovery field, hit me up!
Hello! My name is Bob Williams, I am a long time developer of web based content, games and apps. I love building things and have mostly been someone who follows and enjoys technology a great deal. I wound up here largely the same reasons as many of you. I felt like like our actual lives were slipping through our fingers while we spent more and more time trying to master our digital lives.
Iām concerned about many aspects of our technological lives, but really concerned on the quality of life and the value of what we spend our time on. I believe technology can powerfully connect us, but itās not doing it in a healthy way right now. Technology should be additive to the human experience, and currently it distracts or hijacks the experience rather than adding to it.
Iām interested in technology that adds true benefit, meaningful interaction, and balance into our lives. Our daily driver tech need re-invention ā thatās a task too big for any of us individually, but maybe as a collective we can steer it, or be a part of building it.
I look forward to getting to know you and learning more from you all.
Sorry for the late self-introduction. I am Saiyu, and I was born in China. Currently I am an undergraduate majoring in Information Systems at National University of Singapore.
As a girl who loves arts and music, I never expected to learn coding and tech in my life. But getting into this field has taught me so many things, most important one being technologyās power to change the world, in both a positive way and negative way. The engineering-oriented culture in the tech industry easily creates products that leave ethics and humanity out of the consideration.
As a young adult who is embracing her twenties soon, I struggled to gain back the control of my own attention and choose to live with digital minimalism. But witnessing so many of my peers getting sucked into these āslot machinesā, and the mainstream platforms affecting peopleās self-esteem and mental health (plus other urgent problems like data privacy, societal polarization and the flaws in dominant business models), I feel worried and eagerly want to change the situation. I want to contribute to the wellness and well-being of humans. And I want more young people to join this movement too, as people before us will eventually pass this mission into our hands.
A million thanks to all of you who contributes to this mission. When I talked about these issues with my Computer Science friends, they donāt seem to care that much, and some of my non-tech-savvy friends are OK with the status quoā¦Finding CHT and this community gives me hope. Reading the introductions and aspirations of all these amazing people here gives me hope. I am 100% in this mission. The future is in our hands!
Great @Saiyu! Tell us if you want to do more for HTC, we can include you in the @Campaigners or @CommunityTeam groups! For now start using github, if you still havenāt done it yet.
Hi! My name is Sathya and I am a long time telecommunications expert, with a focus on wireless technologies. I have worked in sales,marketing, business development and advocacy roles at the local and global level. I also have hands on tech experience as a solution architecture, product/program management, field engineer and other roles. I have been lucky to have worked with global customers from startups to fortune 500 entities in various industries and sectors.
I have spent the last couple of decades witnessing and working on various tech that have laid an amazing groundwork for what can follow. As we move into 5G, IoT, AI, MLL, Quantum computing and other new techs the question of creating humane, moral, ethical, green solutions is a necessity and not a luxury anymore. I think we are close to a tipping point of the negatives of technology starting to outweigh its amazing positively transformative capabilities.
Unfortunately over the course of that time the industry has moved farther and farther away from its roots with respect to those values. This is hardly to say that every tech company out there is like that and there are so many great examples of companies making a difference but a concerted effort is required to bring us back to the roots of what all this technology was intended to do. Help human society improve overall rather than make us dependent on it just for the sake of dependence and revenue/profit.
I think a multi-legged approach is required. There has to be an advocacy component, and in DC maybe this might be the right time for that given current politics? There has to be a movement from within the industry itself and I am glad to see several signs of that, including activist employees even in this community. There has to be a meeting of the minds at the highest levels on this topic. Not just giving lip services but also to pull us back to what I see is as the roots of technology: Providing and enabling humane development of our society. I believe that this type of change starts from the bottom up.
I fully appreciate these are lofty goals at a 500 ft view but am very interested in rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty with CHT to be a part of that change. I have been very impressed and excited about CHT since hearing and reading its mission statement and have been eager to be able to volunteer or participate in anyway I can!
Hi @Sathya, impressive experience and point of view! Happy to read that you want to be more involved. We are HTC, born as the CHT forum but now evolving separately, even if we complement each other in a certain way.
I was so stoked to find you all!
