I joined this community when it started years ago and drifted away in the early 20s. It looks like it’s basically dead now (last multi-user engagement on a post was almost 3 years ago). It looks like it was going strong up through the end of 2022, and then it just… evaporated? Does anyone know why that happened? Was it the CHT shift towards AI?
I remember a thriving community with digital meetups hosting dozens of attendees, many of whom were putting strong efforts into the problem space. That feels like something we need now more than ever. Where did everyone go?
CHT still seems very active, i’ve been enjoying their substack, where there is often insightful conversation in the comments, e.g. The World That Game Theory Built
Hi there, I am the facilitator of Humane Tech Community (HTC).
Yes, the community is dormant at the moment, and has been for some time. At the time both the scope and audience were too broad to keep upholding an effective community by just volunteers and on a rallying cry of “Triggering a World-wide Cultural Awakening” which as borrowed from the Center of Humane Technology (CHT) at the time. I later repositioned the community along The Pyramids of Humane Technology to be more solution-oriented, but it was still too broad. Most new members joined only to detract and lure people away to their own initiatives (which is a problem many communities face.. we like to do things our own way, be more in control, and fragment rather than unite). The forum became quieter and was later found by automated spambots creating fake accounts and fishing posts that became a daily burden for me. So I turned it invite-only, and effectively dormant. HTC has independence of CHT, and the background on that is in the history of this forum, but as it happened also summarized in a fediverse post I just wrote:
Running a community such as this in a good way requires full-time involvement, and a community team of ‘stayers’ with grit and determination to keep doing the boring and unthankful chores (commons janitoring) that a healthy community requires. For the past years I’ve been most involved with the fediverse social network, what I consider a Humane Technology field laboratory, based on the open ActivityPub social network protocol, and am currently elaborating Social experience design (SX) on the social dynamics that exist in decentralized online commons.
I am a bigger believer in movement formation than I am in communities. Communities are fine, but they don’t scale well Depending on how things evolve I may have plans to revive this community based on insights gleaned from my SX explorations.
Depending on how things evolve I may have plans to revive this community based on insights gleaned from my SX explorations.