Welcome to the community, Rio, and thank you for writing the article 
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Hi, my name is Camila James and Iām a WordPress Expert. A WordPress fanatic by day and a reader by night, I Enjoy exploring the ever-changing world of Technology, Development, and eCommerce. Being a Tech Savvy and Enthusiast I usually enjoys giving Reviews on Technology ideas and topic. I decade an experience to my current role where I am dedicated and inspiring the Tech world.
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Hi! Iām Mehret Biruk, and Iām a digital wellness coach with a passion to teach, inspire and empower individuals to discover the pleasures of the offline world.
A long time critic of the attention economy, I began my journey towards digital wellness seven years ago when I deleted my Instagram account to take back control of her time and attention (that was back in 2013ā oh, how time flies!). That decision jumpstarted my interest in learning about how social media, our digital devices, and the Internet in general impacts our social, psychological, and physical well-being, and what we can do about it.
For years now, I have been learning about the attention economy and the psychological consequences of the digital world in our lives. Iāve been sharing the knowledge Iāve gained on my personal blog, and is the host of Torontoās Digital Wellness Meetup group.
As a digital wellness coach, my main goal is to TEACH, INSPIRE, and EMPOWER individuals to began their journey towards a healthier digital life and experience the Joy(s) of Missing Out.
I have my MA in Sociology, and my background includes, research, mental health, peer counselling, program coordination, and community leadership.
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Itās nice to have you in our midst. Welcome to the community, Mehret!
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Hi Iām Will, an autistic dad to a 12 year old boy and 15 year old girl.
Always fascinated in technology from an early age.
Have to admit this increased my awareness to the footprint I leave, and what I am sharing.
backed up my data from instagram, pinterest and twitter platforms and deleted my accounts.
Still working on Facebook.
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Much welcome to our community, Will!
Iām Julie, I was a software engineer in the 90s and 00s in UK, Silicon Valley and Asia. Around 2010 I started to become truly concerned about the changes I was seeing with humanity. Over the years I became more and more concerned for numerous reasons and considered if workplace expectations had limited our ability to design for extreme edge cases and discover unintended metaeffects.
So I left my VP job, sacrificed Ā£250k to go do a masters in psychology - done with distinction and now seeking a tribe to make a meaningful difference to in my industry - to get more people on the ground thinking deeper and wider.
My passion, and my reason for being thought of as a bit weird - is about technology and itās effect on humans and humanity. I think computer science is missing key knowledge of systems, ethics, psychology, physiology, neurology and sociology.
What truly concerns me is the dearth of unbiased human centred scientific research. It is all focussed on putting tech in the centre, humans becoming a product. No matter the industry our default thought for needs now is ācan tech do itā - it needs to change to "must we do it?
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You hit the nail on the head, @juliehendry, welcome to the community!
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Hi All 
My name is Mandla, and Iām based in Cape Town, South Africa.
I am a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Australia working in the Digital Transformation and Change Management space, where we help large organisations in Health Care, Mining, Education and the Public Sector create and adopt new digital products, tools and systems. I predominantly work in the Employee Experience (as a UX designer) side of things, so mainly around how we can prepare employees for the future of work?; how can we teach them the necessary skills they will require in the future?; and what does the future of learning look like?
Iām deeply passionate about creating innovative value-sensitive products with a user-centred, holistic approach. In the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about Ethical Design, and I believe that the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology and toolset can help designers create more ethical products/designs. For this reason, I am using VSD to explore how we can make social interaction in multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) more human and ethical. Hopefully, this research will add to the discussion about how we can build ethical VEs for VR.
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Hello all. I am new to the tech field. I got great inspiration from watching the recent documentary and wanted to connect with the Humane Tech world!! Glad to be here. Thanks!
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Hi everyone,
My name is Alexandre Faucher, Iām 43, Iām working in tech for 20 years now : 7 years as PM at Microsoft (if you are more than 35, MSN portal and MSN Messenger may ring you a bell ;)). In 2009 I created a Digital Agency in Paris, we were designing and developping websites. In 2016, I co-created GENIUS OBJECTS, a smart textile company which develops IOT solutions leveraging a textile sensor (with applications in Ambiant computing and no screen UX).
Why Iām here ? Iām concerned with screens omnipresence and worried for my kids.
Iām dad of a son of 10 who wakes up in the morning asking where the iPad is and who begs for having his own Smartphone every week, he constantly asks for screen time and I have to admit the climate at home is often rough when itās about to manage screens time limits. My wife and I tried to explain, to hide, to deprive, we also tried Parental Controlsā¦ nothing worked. Speaking with other parents, reading articles, I realized that this was a huge societal problem.
During COVID lockdown, having more time to think and having the chance to work with a team of product designers and devs, we tried to find a solutionā¦
We came up with the idea of a smart pouch to encourage screen breaks. Kids (and adults!) put their Smartphone into the pouch, then any hour without screen is encouraged with gamification. In addition, we ensure kidsāSmartphone stays inaccessible during the night.
Our concept is somehow similar to the cookie box we can see in The Social Dilemma, except it is textile and it is not a strongbox (you can open it at anytime but you will loose your points). The purpose is to generate a discussion about screeens at home, to educate, to lead towards independence.
We have a small community of parents involved in product design, have a proto, a nameā¦ Next step is to launch our crowfunding campaing in a couple of weeks. Iāll be happy to share more infos and keep you posted (after having checked this is compatible with this place and audience which is not a promotion place).
In any case, Iām waiting to engage with you and to contribute to limit screen addiction and it impact on society.
We have to do somethingā¦
Alexandre.
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Hi, Iām Paulo, a software developer from Portugal.
I signed up for this forum a couple of years ago (shortly after listening to Tristan Harris on Sam Harrisā podcast), but something recently happened that motivated me to become more active.
A few years ago, I started to worry that my attention kept being drawn to social media, memes, and youtube in detriment to things that I cared about, despite using less than many people I knew.
Fast forward to 2020, and I started to see things that were kind of common in the US or the UK but not in Portugal: people I knew for many years began to become much angrier than before, constantly outraged. They seemed to assume that the rest of the world was somehow similar to what they kept seeing in their individually curated feeds, which drove them to become radicalized. Some became obsessed with conspiracy theories. Others would spend their time insulting people they disagreed with online.
Anyway, it feels this can get much worse, so Iāve been trying to help any way I can. Iāve been trying to inform people about some of these problems. Itās great that The Social Dilemma was released since it works as a great introduction to recommend to people new to this. Recently I also started writing about these things as well: AI the Ever-Increasing Distortion of Reality
(by the way, feel free to give some feedback if you feel I missed something or if my tone mightāve not been ideal to convince people who arenāt yet aware of this problem.)
My background as a software engineer who worked on implementing Facebook and Google code on a known e-commerce website for ad and tracking purposes only made me feel somewhat part of the problem.
Anyway, thanks for the work youāre all doing.
Itās great to get closer to the conversation,
Paulo
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Welcome @Alexandre and @PauloEsteves! You have interesting stories to tell. Donāt be shy and create a discussion topic, or comment to an existing thread 
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Thank you Arnold ! Will do,
hello @Alexandre i have some thoughts that seems to be common to yours.
i have been very interested to develop the box like cookie box. but it cost much than students can afford. i dont know how well does it work .
i would like to hear some stories and ideas if you have any, on diverting kids from screens.
i lead a non profit here in kathmandu, Nepal.
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Hi!
Iām Helene Auramo, an entrepreneur of Prƶnƶ. I have been starting many businesses in the past (such as the first social media agency in Finland and Slush.org) but never anything like this before.
Iām now focusing my energies in changing the world by building a new platform for changemakers called Prƶnƶ.
Prƶnƶ is a place to find like-minded professionals whenever you need them, without ads and spam. As you all know, social media is crowded of content and ads and has changed how marketing and sales is done. I want to change that. I want to help the best professionals to be found - always. Without the not-so-good-elements of social media. And adding values on the core.
I have been interested in humane tech for a while and this community has been an inspiration for me and my new conscious business.
I am also now adding to our Prƶnƶ platform **a new possibility to find ** developers and designers, leaders and other people who are looking for professionals with humane tech interest/knowledge. This way I hope to connect like-minded people. I have the same feature for people looking for others interested in improving for example sustainability, equality and diversity & inclusion.
I have tried my best to design the platform as good as possible, but we are just starting. We are currently running in beta and will open doors soon to public.
So far I have self-funded this with some grants from the Finnish government. Iām so happy that they believed in us. <3
You can apply for an invitation from our waiting list on our website www.prono.fi.
I would love to connect with all of you there.
Please email me (helene(at)prono.fi) if you want to connect and help me with this ambitious idea.
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Welcome Helene! A very exciting undertaking. Donāt hesitate to ask questions on the forum, and tell us about your insights
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Hi all! Very thankful to have landed on this wonderful group. I have spent the last 6 years or so working in privacy, security, and regulatory compliance at technology startups (one using AI for fraud prevention, and currently at a fintech). Since working in this space, Iāve learned that compliance and regulation is very limited in what it can accomplish and I hope that the work I do outside of it can make things better.
I also am fresh off volunteering for the Biden campaign as a text leader and active phonebanker in Wisconsin and Arizona. In the last 4 months, Iāve been part of thousands of conversations with voters and it has never been clearer to me how divided we are by our information siloes and misinformation. Now that Iām mostly done with political volunteering for the time being, Iād like to start chipping away at solving this problem. Please reply if you yourself has opportunities or would like to collaborate on something. This is very important to me and I can set time towards it.
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I would like to connect with you @HeyYeri . Would you have time to continue discussion in Zoom/Hangouts or some other format? You can find me on Twitter @heleneauramo or via email helene(at)prono.fi. My latest startup is www.prono.fi.
Hi everybody, my name is Mike Natanzon and my background is in economics and architecture. About 4 years ago I became painfully aware of the serious polarization, hatred, distrust and so on in social media. I tried to figure out what led to this - back in the day people were talking about how great it was that billions of people have access to information and can connect with each other on the internet. At some point I realized that the root of the problem is the perverse incentives that dictate how Google and Social Media companies generate revenue - through advertising based on ratings. Over the past 4 years the situation only got worse, and we see the effects of it spill over into real life.
I realized that the only way to alter this trajectory is to come up with a new business model that isnāt based on ratings and advertising. Iāve been working on this challenge for the past few years, and came up with both a business model and a technological solution that I believe can be a real game-changer in how we interact with social media. Iām now finishing the prototype of this tool and looking for people to collaborate with so that we can reclaim social media so people can learn and connect with each other.
Iām glad I found this community because I see there are so many people here who understand the problems in social media today and looking for ways to make things better.
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