What makes a humane technologist?

I think it’s an important question that begs more dialogue. We have a lot of ideas of what humane technology is. But what about the people creating it? What’s on that curriculum?

I’ve been inquiring about this for years now. The question itself has become a muse, inspiring me to explore what it would look like to crowdsource a syllabus, write a book, teach a course, start a community of practice, facilitate retreats…

I finally put some thoughts out there in a blog post and am excited to see how it lands. Curious to hear any reflections!

Key Takeaways:
• We don’t get humane technology without humane technologists
• We need to develop curricula and communities of practice that empower humane technologists with the skills, awarenesses, values and experiences that are essential to create in a more life-giving way.
• The path of the humane technologist offers a high ROI in terms of richness of life.

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A very inspiring article you have written here, @andrewmurraydunn . Thanks a lot for posting! I’ve written a response, that I have posted below (and on LinkedIn and a blog too).

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Humane Technology builds on Humanity

The Center for Humane Technology has provided a good definition of what Humane Technology is: It is values centric, sensitive to human nature, narrows the gap between the powerful and the marginalized, reduces greed and hatred, helps to build shared reality, and accounts for and minimizes the externalities that it generates in the world. But what about the people creating the technology?

This is the question asked by Andrew Murray Dunn in his great article “The Path of The Humane Technologist”. A very intriguing question, and an important one too, as from its definition the vastness of scope of the Humane Technology field becomes clear. How do we become proficient craftsmen able to shape the humane technology solutions that are so direly needed in this world? And how do we set out on a course where building these kinds of solutions becomes the new normal?

Andrew provides three key takeaways in answering these additional questions, which I’ll quote here:

  1. We don’t get humane technology without humane technologists.

  2. We need to develop curricula and communities of practice that empower humane technologists with the skills, awarenesses, values and experiences that are essential to create in a more life-giving way.

  3. The path of the humane technologist offers a high ROI in terms of richness of life.

Going just from these three points - which I generally agree on - there are some interesting observations to make. First of all - in order to add the quality of “humane” to technology - apparently we’ll need domain experts in Humanity. I am using the term ‘domain expert’ with some irony here. In software development it is usually the domain experts that help in translating language from the business domain into technical concepts that technologists use when crafting the code. The number of failed IT projects is witness to the fact that much is usually lost in this translation. For humane technology to work the “handover barrier” from the business to the technical world should not exist. Most practical would be if: Every humane technologist must be a domain expert in Humanity.

That’s right. Stepping off the analogy of domain expertise, what is a precondition to humane technology are technologists that fully embrace and practice the virtue of Humanity. Reformulating Andrew we have to fully ‘talk the talk and walk the walk’. And with Humanity being such a basic virtue this goes well beyond the realm of technology. Humane technology needs much more than mere humane technologists to build it. We need a societal culture that fosters humanity!

With this insight - though I feel that Andrew and I are aligned in our thinking - I would like to further enlarge the scope Andrew’s article to an even more holistic level. Andrew writes:

As far as I’m aware, there is no source of holistic education reaching technologists that goes the depth required to empower them to “create technology worthy of the human spirit.”

But I think there is. It is the experience of life itself in all its glory. Taking from the common wisdom, common knowledge and commonsense that is all around us. And then building on top of that, furthering and deepening it. We are talking about adopting appropriate life philosophies here. An approach to life where humane technology is the natural outcome of our work. The article, in my opinion, understates the importance of this by focusing too much and too quickly on the technological aspects. While I wholeheartedly agree that we need to develop curricula and communities of practice that empower technologists, they will be like fragile islands in the maelstrom of modern society if not firmly embedded in a bigger movement.

I have frequently pondered how discussions on mankind’s biggest wicked problems, such as climate change, would often not address the root causes at all. How greed, hunger for power, shallow definitions of success and status reinforce themself in a vicious cycle that leads to growing inequality and a decline of freedoms and human rights. That the primary system that drives modern society is inherently unsustainable. I call this system Hypercapitalism, or capitalism-run-amok, and it has the tendency to erode Humanity. In fact, I would go one step further and state that:

Hypercapitalism stands in direct opposition of Humanity!

When not addressing this root cause, we are doomed to fail in solving our wicked problems. We must explore alternative ways to counteract the corrupting influence that hypercapitalism has on our virtues, and build solutions that embody these new approaches.

It is clear that this is a humongous task, as hypercapitalism is all-pervasive. It has infested all of our thinking, manifests in our day-to-day activities, and has become part of our language. We are being conditioned to be conformant hypercapitalists on a daily basis. It is the norm and hence the easiest path to take. One we are not even aware of most of the time. It is funny that in the third key takeaway Andrew talks about a “high ROI” that is to be had when walking the path of the Humane Technologist. This is good example of hypercapitalist language use, and the need to “sell” our arguments.

If you start to look for it, you’ll find examples of dehumanizing language everywhere, especially in the business world. Terminology such as “human capital” and “digital transformation” are clear, but also think of “goodwill”, “worth”, “interest”, and even the word “value” itself. Words where usage in monetary meaning is more prevalent to that of the human qualities they may express. Pervasive hypercapitalism is where the “moving fast and break things” mentality stems from, and unfortunately this has become a global paradigm which is not restricted to Silicon Valley.

Pathways to Humane Technology

With the added requirement to address root causes - in this case of harmful technology being created - the question is now raised: Is there still a practical path that leads to widespread Humane Technology adoption? I am quite hopeful in this area. The reason is that currently many, many people are truly starting to recognize the inherent unsustainability of hypercapitalism - a broken system - and are actively involved in creating alternatives. Literally thousands upon thousands of initiatives exist all over the world, working towards brighter futures. When people are not aware of how they are affected by hypercapitalism, and are only engaging with others who are similarly unable to see, most of this positive movement goes unnoticed. Even worse is that society - by means of news and social media - actively serves to suppress our awareness here. Simply because negative news sells best.

If we become aware of the broader landscape we can become practical optimists. Though here exists a great weakness, namely that all these separate initiatives are very fragmented. The landscape is opaque, chaotic and very hard to navigate. Wheels are reinvented all of the time. So, yes, we need to develop curricula and communities of practice, but moreover we must integrate with and interconnect what is already out there. We need to build a social fabric of cooperation. We need binding forces and communication channels that cross community boundaries and bring people together from all walks of life.

That fully aligns with Andrew’s idea of “crowdsourcing perspectives”, but as a continual process. After all, Humanity and the culture that fosters it, can only be enacted by us all collectively i.e. by the crowd. Which brings me to another difference of approach I would bring to Andrew’s envisioned initiative. I have stated that an alternative approach to life, personal life experience, and concerted collaborative action are key success factors. What I find in the article is that there’s too much focus on individuals with “inspirational leadership” as prerequisite to bring humane technology about, and that these leaders ideally have to possess the full range of human qualities and skills to be role models.

I feel that the proposed methodology should take more into account that:

  • Though nobody is perfect, each human being has their own qualities and unique life experience to contribute that can make them a role model to others in these areas.
  • Though it is valuable to bring structure to the huge body of knowledge in a sort of framework curricula, there’s an equal vastness of approaches that leads to mastering them.

Not addressing these might lead to pitfalls that should be avoided. The first one is unwittingly creating an elitist approach, and the second one - related - an overly academic field of study that reinforces the elitist approach. Andrew writes:

I don’t believe we have role model humane technologists or humane tech companies to point to and lift up today.

Maybe not the perfect role models such as the Godess would create, but these will never exist anyway as nobody is perfect. Here too it is valuable to broaden horizons, and look to those people who already conduct their business differently. Or even in ways that do not correspond to “business success” as it is commonly defined. Arguably open source software has eaten the world. Silicon Valley is thriving on it, often in exploitative and abusive ways that do not honour the work, sweat and tears that the open source developers have put in. Consequently there are no good revenue models at present for those working in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). There’s no hypercapitalist business success, hence little to no attention of the masses.

I find it very frustrating that the free software movement - despite their huge contribution to the tech world - is mostly looked down upon. It is often not even mentioned, even by the humane technology movement at large. This while right here many of the true values and virtues of Humanity are espoused by its practicioners. I also firmly believe that there are good business models for FOSS development that benefit the commons and society at large. Many interesting developments are underway in this regards, and I feel that they’ll be the most furtile ground for fresh humane technology concepts to arise. Personally I am enamoured by the decentralized Fediverse, driven by FOSS, which has the potential to become “Social Media Reimagined”.

Regarding business models there’s lots of ongoing innovation. More and more worker and platform cooperatives and sustainable businesses are founded. IT projects are commissioned in large part by commercial entities, and by taking hypercapitalist business incentives out of the equation, we create preconditions for humane technology to thrive. Adopting a life philosophy where Humanity is central may entail for an entrepreneur that a decent income is more than enough. There need not be the hypercapitalist incentive to be become rich and famous. Embracing such notions requires courage, and along the way people may be overcome by temptation and the lure of wealth and influence. New business models can counter this, for instance by means of a steward ownership or democratically elected positions in a cooperative with capped salary scales.

Final point I want to mention is that I very much subscribe to the idea of practical mindfulness to bring initiatives such as these to flourishment. I’ve written The Fifth State of Optimism that describes how I personally apply the concept. I believe that in going forward only progress counts, however small, and that time is entirely unimportant. After all if something is worthy of time expenditure and is mutual beneficial, then people will flock together to make it happen. Progress depends on merit.

I hope that - even though maybe Andrew intends to found a business on top of it - this initiative will be fully open and for the commons.

Additional Key Takeaways

I love Andrew’s article, and the way it has inspired me to write this little piece of text. As a TL;DR I’d like to add the following takeaways to Andrew’s summary, and even place them at the top of the list:

  • Humane technology depends on Humanity and to create it one should embrace and practice this virtue in daily life.

  • Technology mirrors the society that creates it, and for it to be humane we must weave a social fabric that fosters humanity.

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You’ve both posted important questions, thank you. And many ideas as well.

The humane technologist understands first and foremost that widespread long use of computers, screens, devices and media itself is the root problem, as is using these in a way that causes information overload. Manipulation, while also an extremely serious problem, is secondary to the main problem that computer devices themselves and media itself needs to be taken in small bits, and that nobody including technologists and other office workers should overuse or attempt to consume many pieces of information at once. This is in direct opposition to how computers are designed and used today. This is a radical proposal, an attempt to fix both computers and work/schooling habits themselves which are the unquestioned core of our existence yet are both deeply troubled.

I’d like to say the heretical thing. The thing that all humane tech discussions dare not say. The problem is our tech devices, information overload and being zombified by screens, whatever they contain.

Solutions: Make devices easy to use, and easy not to use. Don’t addict people. Don’t write a lot or post lots of content. Don’t make anything complicated. (Complicated does not equal intelligent.) Make everything simple and easy. Make text sizes very large so people don’t have to strain, and most screens small so people can still see the outside world. Absolutely run all apps and anything else full window and full screen, so there is no information overload. No multitasking. No notifications except for direct messages. Nobody, including tech workers, should spend more than 4 hours a day on a computer.

Yet we accept computer use as though it isn’t dangerous and unhealthy. A double standard. We are conveniently ignoring the core problem. The truth is right in front of us, but we ignore it because we never dare to be without a computer.

For tech workers: Redesign everything for the above. The next Apple will be the company that understands information overload and that computers themselves are unhealthy. It’s like in the old days when cities were powered by coal, and then they weren’t. You don’t see the terror in front of you until it’s gone.

For schools and work: Promote and practice the wisdom that computers themselves are bad for our health, as is any kind of information overload. Simplify. Deep thinking. All people should be well-rested rather than overworked. Real intelligence and productivity rather than busywork. Health.

Hi John, I visited your blog and I very much appreciated your reflections on the possibility of defining the figure of a “Human Technologist”.
I am willing to open a dialogue with you that can lead to one or more initiatives in order to give strength and build up the figure of the human technologist. I am a school principal who has been retired for some years, already a teacher and teachers trainer, and I have followed the development of technologies for more than 30 years. Now I have a no-profit association and a working group around a magazine that we have been distributing for free for three years.
I believe that in order to propose the program we should start forming a working group that we can call “International working group for human technologists”. As a first step, let’s define what we mean when we talk about “humane technologist”! Who should we primarily involve? Let’s also talk via email!
Best regards!
Luigi

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It would be delightful if we can keep most of the discourse out in the open here, rather than moving to private discussion. If you feel comfortable in doing so, of course. That way we have most chance of others jumping in with us :slight_smile:

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Dear Arnold,
your answer to Andrew Murraw Dunn is simply fantastic because it is clear and true. If you don’t mind I would like to translate it in italian and post in a blog that I am going to start in italian. At the end I will put a link to your original post.
As you have seen I have replied to the Andrew post and I think that it is really a good idea to start something about the figure of the Humane Technologist.
See you soon to hear from us on this important issue,
best regards
Luigi

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Thank you! I’d be honored @lamacri. You can consider the article to be CC-BY-SA licensed.

A note to both @andrewmurraydunn and @lamacri … this community might be repurposed to facilitate the community of practice, together with the website (which is already slated for an overhaul), and together with our github presence and other social media channels. The Humanetech Translation Program then would be used to globalize curricula contents.

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Ok That’s fine! Let’s continue on HTC!

@aschrijver I agree to facilitate the community of practice, improve the HTC web site for Humane Tech translation program and our social presence and globalize curricula contents.
And I agree with @andrewmurraydunn Key Takeaways:
• We don’t get humane technology without humane technologists
• We need to develop curricula and communities of practice that empower humane technologists with the skills, awarenesses, values and experiences that are essential to create in a more life-giving way.
• The path of the humane technologist offers a high ROI in terms of richness of life.
Anyway, let’s start defining the structure and contents of the curriculum.
Let’s start by saying that technologists are people creating software and technological tools but also those who work in schools, in training, journalists, those who work in the field of communication and information technologies.
Furthermore, I believe we also need, at micro and macro level, influencers and witnesses, see Social Dilemma, help us to spread best practices for human technology. Spreading human technologies means also working on both sides of the same coin: changing technologies and using them in a way that is sustainable for us and for the environment in which we live.

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I appreciated the concepts expressed in your post. As a school person, teacher, educator and trainer I think that spreading advice, rules to adults and adolescents is really important. Young mothers continually put their children in front of smartphones, tablets, etc. There is a risk of an involution of the training process of the younger generations. The dangers are many and technology addictions are widespread. Let’s work to help reverse the trend! I have been following the development of technologies for many years. I am there.

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Thanks for your enthusiasm. I’ve been pondering a repositioning for a while now, and have been very hesitant to go forward with it. This because there is a veritable Mount Everest of work and time expenditure involved, and I’ve found on multiple occasions that after setting things in motion it is mostly the community lead that ends up holding the ball. I am just a volunteer, like any other posting here. I wrote some more about it in other places, e.g. quoting:

As a result of things going slowly I now feel guilty towards @abuikis who graciously provided a translation environment, and the @translators I rallied to join the HTP program. I’ll ponder about the best way to move forward. Ideally things should kick off with a bunch of enthusiasts whom I can rely on to certain extent, to divide the work among us.

Anyway, this is Off-Topic for this thread. If anyone wants to react related to this we can use existing topic Ideas On How to Move Forward?

Back to @andrewmurraydunn’s humane technologists piece.

As stated, the humane tech field is vast, new, and represents a mostly empty canvas that needs to be painted still. So I think it is okay to just provide the “frame” of the framework, and - instead of outright teaching others to be humane technologists - be more of a coach and mentor that inspires to paint this canvas together. We can provide direction, put things in proper context, but we don’t provide a ready-made, easy-to-consume package.

The curricula form the frame, which must be crowdsourced and gradually filled in with tools, methodologies and reference guides. It’ll never be finished.

The target audience are technologists plus the organizations where they operate. A bigger emphasis on targeting people at the start of their career or still studying, and organizations that already started walking the good path (i.e. with the right mindset), might be prudent.

They keyword is in empowerment, I think.

This also means that, rather than handing participants entry to our own existing relationship network, it might be better to instead learn them how to build their own network most effectively and tailored to their situation. The methodology might be set up such that as participants are doing so, they expand the aggregate network of the community so it become ever more of a unifying communication medium that connects otherwise fragmented initiatives. This different focus also does alleviate us from much effort we need to spend. We have delegated networkding, as it were, in a way where we stand to benefit from it too.

Similarly this goes for the courseware. If you look e.g. at Coursera courses, or what happens at basically any educational institution: Every student does the same courseware, repeating the tasks, creating more of less the same output. It determines their grades and is then discarded: In fact this means that the wheel is reinvented millions of times, and then not used to roll the cart!

(Note too, how many people are cutting corners here. Stackoverflow for instance is full of people asking homework questions. They are in it for the certificate, nothing more)

What if there were no fixed courseware? (heads up @m3me …interesting?) What if the education was an entirely creative process, where everyone is actively involved in evolving the field? Every participant could be involved with solving just some small pieces of the framework / curricula puzzle. The ones that are most dear to their heart. Part of the methodology should be that they create the follow-up questions and open issues that participant can work on to keep the ball rolling. In other words:

The education track EQUALS the crowdsourcing process.

I think with the above an entirely different approach emerges. One where the focus is much more on culture (fostering philosophical aspects mentioned above), facilitation and offering the tools for that, rather than being the teacher (or even the inspirational community leader).

In summary on educational tasks set to others:

  • Ensure all has practical use, nothing gets lost (building blocks)
  • Should contribute to crowdsourced base (the “frame”)
  • Maximize participatory incentives (the rewards)
  • Involve teachers, educational institutions, other direct stakeholders

Update: The incentives should aim to fix the “barrier to action” problem, and tools / methodology the “modern-day ADD” (at least the part where sensory & information overload causes it).

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I find it hard to engage in these long form discussions in forums as there is so much time in constructing written language. So I caveat all this with the Blaise Pascal quote:

I would have written less, but I didn’t have enough time.

Thanks for medium piece @andrewmurraydunn :pray:. It was stimulating and warming for me to read through. I think we’d have much to talk about.

I’ll start with some framing challenges to all this. Do we need to distinguish between education and learning?

Let me try to articulate what I mean…

Education is institutionalised spaces and standardised processes for learning. The accepted norms, behaviours, processes by which we transfer knowledge across time. Across generations. Universities, colleges, school, academies etc. These are spaces for institutionalised ways of learning. Following standards, set structures and rules.The foundations in which they evolved from are still there. Universities were established to pass knowledge down to the aristocracy and children of the wealthy. Perpetuating power structures. Schools to ensure people were connected to mechanical time (kronos time) and to ensure they had basic literacy and numeracy skills to work in factories. To scale with the need for the division of labour required to build the modern westernised world. To coordinate labour for capital. Much of the modern curricula we see is based on standardisation for these aims. Testing knowledge and competencies. As much as a passionate teach tries to hack the standard curriculum they are in a context where the constraints set the limits on how effectively they can encourage self-directed learning.

Yes it is rinse and repeat. Reflective of poorly designed systems for learning. Like the saying I use to hear from most of my student peers at uni “P’s get degrees” - as in most people were just looking to pass (P). Not learn. They wanted the piece of paper at the end so they could follow the dominant narrative. Go to school. Take a gap year. Go to university. Maybe intern. Get a job. Find a partner. Start a family. Get a mortgage. Work till you’re 70 paying it off…then retire and hopefully get time to now relax and enjoy time with the grandkids. But statistically they’ll likely die soon after. There is again variance here and I am speaking from a relatively privileged and biased position being a 41 year old white male living in Australia my whole life. Though I have travelled and had a very unorthodox life experience. So I am a product of my context to a very large extent.

The “academy” has misaligned incentives. Universities reproduce the memes and narratives of power. Tenures and publishing quotas, funding cuts, tradeoffs and industry influence, endowment funds, donors and pressure of where money goes when it is “given”. Education is teaching and training. But in universities. The purpose for the most part is to perpetuate the status quo. Models and maps of the world. There is a place for this. We couldn’t build our modern civilisation, all the infrastructure we have, if we didn’t have this. For example, civil engineering is deterministic. The knowledge of mathematical constants is used to test geometrical patterns, weight bearing, material densities and strengths, and the trajectory of a bridge being constructed in sections or to meet in the middle. We needed institutionalised learning (education) for this. All the engineers need to be basing their view of the world on the same explanatory models. The same laws of physics.

There’s nuance to all this. But expanding further might detract from the focus of this discussion.

Learning in comparison is organic, instinctual and natural. It is life. Constant change. Non linear. Animals, plants, fungus, insects all do it etc. Learning is encoded in our DNA. We watch, mimic and make connections as we are exposed to stimuli. We do, we try and fail, repeat and learn. We immerse ourselves in the experience (kairos time). In the stories and meaning they imbue. It’s an ongoing process of discovery. Developing know what to know how. Kids don’t always need the know-why. Adults are slightly different but I believe this is related to our bias to action and problem solving we have as a result of institutionalised learning. E.g. I want to learn this so I can get a better job. I want to learn this so I can get a promotion. I want to learn this because I need to solve a problem. Not harnessing natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation.

But it’s easy to get bogged down in semantics with this so I will avoid explaining as my time (kronos) constraints mean it will likely end up more incoherent than I would like it to be. Hence part of the problem.

Our interfaces for expressing ourselves are limiting. Can I type of the speed of my thought? No. I can’t even speak at the speed of thought most of the time. Unless I’ve taken some psilocybin and decide to spit out a cypher. It’s also linear. Learning sometimes needs deep uninterrupted time. From what I understand it is that the best learning happens when the interface matches speed of the brain making connections. Conversations and observations. We learn best in environments that reflect this natural style of learning. How do I teach my child about physics? Through conversations and demonstrations. Questioning and discussion in real time and in a context that harnesses any immediate motivation. Yes, motivation…the why.

I find these different labels that have emerged and are more present now interesting. Humane tech, ethical tech, responsible tech, beneficial tech, public interest tech…ergh but this is the challenge. It is about our collective sense making. What are we actually trying to do and why? What does any of this mean?

To build humane tech we need humane technologists. Yes. Maybe there is an intersection with the above labels getting bandied around here we are missing. As you alluded to in your article @andrewmurraydunn it is multidimensional. Though we could debate what that actually means. Because language is contextual. Oh my…I digress…

Are we all trying to do the same thing? Liberate the human spirit and enable human flourishing. Maybe in the intention…but the actions are different. There is hypocrisy everywhere in these emergent fields. I found it on the Zebras site. Coming directly from an article where one of the Zebras was espousing all this stuff about ethical technology and surveillance capitalism, then I was hit with a onboarding flow with what I would argue is unethical tech and manipulative design. But maybe this is the problem we are trying to solve here? Help people to learn better, together. Help us all learn to co-design new systems so doing what we ought to do is just easier. It shouldn’t be as hard. But we are constrained. If you are software engineer steeped in privacy and security by design it’s very different.

Case in point is some of your tools you’re using Andrew. They exclude people. I would have filled out your forms but you used google forms. Your reasoning for this might be fine from your perspective. But for me I am doing whatever I can where I can to not use google tech. Hard these days I know. Don’t get me started on Google Apps for Education!

Some of your sites have fundamental privacy and security issues. Here is one of them based on a simple scan using https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net/


This can just be ignorance or not knowing any better. Sometimes this is due to wilful ignorance or just the usual ethical tradeoffs we make. Ease of implementation, convenience, proximity bias etc.

You should have an SSL and always load over HTTPS. You should not use google tag manager and google analytics. You should have fonts served from your site, not phoning home to google and sending everyones IP addresses to enhance the profiles Google builds on people. These “digital twins” modelled on a servers to be experimented on like we’re all in some big digital skinner box. These choices, informed or not, are perpetuating the problems. This is not a personal attack. You might say “humane tech” but humane should respect my human rights, my agency. My time and effort. Humane tech should reflect our highest ideals and desires to enrich and advance human existence.

Now back to learning and curricula…or am I already talking about it? Kind of…experiential learning is embodied knowledge, it comes from doing. Like the reinforcement of neural pathways in the nervous system and central relay centre (brain) when we learn mindfulness techniques. Or wing chun kung fu, riding a bike, surfing, climbing, or learning to tie a knot. The whole learn by doing approach is not new but in our context we are talking about here with humane tech. How do we create humane technologists? We help people build humane technology in a social learning environment.

This is related to what you expressed @aschrijver and alludes to the direction I envision our social learning platform evolving.

This is touches on some aspects of where I believe we need to take both education and learning not just in this area we are labelling as “humane tech” but more broadly. I covered some of these topics in a course I designed for Greater Than Learning. Designing learning experiences collectively and experientially is part of the point of the platform. I’ll be lazy and reuse something I’ve already written for our current community proposal to transition to a platform co-op.

Imagine a world where we could unite as a species. Meaningfully connect and collectively imagine. Where we learn together and co-design digital technologies that will enable us to all flourish. Better lives. Hospitable planet.

But how do we do it when it’s all so darn complicated?

When competitive mindsets pit us against each other? When information and insight is siloed? When command and control hierarchies reign supreme? When misaligned incentives get in the way of recognising our shared humanity?

We learn to be, to make, to design, build, and create better, together.

We need cyber-physical spaces for people to learn better, together. To collectively sense-make and embrace the complexity and perceived messiness of our world. To connect, and collaborate on problems that they’re passionate about solving. Creating new business models designed to enable better outcomes for people, and planet.

We need to connect diverse communities of practice across fields and disciplines. To learn new ways of thinking, doing and being. We need information to flow so motivated change makers have the best fit tools, insights and wisdom at their fingertips. To design technologies that reflect our highest ideals and meet our immediate collective needs.

Just exploring some of what you suggested there @aschrijver - I like the line of reasoning here. What you are talking about is significant collaboration in instructional design which is more related to courses and curricula. This scaffolding of knowledge approach has issues in this multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary field. Partly because we don’t really know. Much of these things are emergent. It’s non linear, it involves perceptions and values and all the things “non-concrete”. The expertise to do this is highly distributed. This is lots of friction so you need to have a system to design some of that away and coordinate the collaboration effectively. I think we can easily align people on the why and the what. The how is a bit more challenging. I have have some decent clarity on distilling this complexity. If I can make the time to write it down into prose it is going to take some time. Likely a book. For now I have systems diagrams, maps, conceptual models, potential interfaces, and inspiration from biological systems to draw upon.

There is so much to unpack with all this but we’re making progress. Tiny steps. Compounding effects.

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Valid points above. But I think absolutes are hard to achieve in reality. Yes all aspects of humane tech are worth striving for. But in real life we simply don’t have enough time or resources, have a certain business model, do things to save money and time, and so on. What counts is heading in the humane tech direction, with a “refreshing” mindset.

Yes, you are right in that, @Free. But I think in general with the approaches outlined above it becomes easier for anyone to hook up to humane tech developments. It makes education at the same time more accessible and more directly beneficial. As you adopt things that are directly applicable to the business you are in, while adhering to an open approach (where possible and feasible) and contribute your part, you leave something for the next person to build further upon. If a lot of people do the same you get many tiny or larger ‘building blocks’ that can be readily applied. There is a growing ecosystem and - more importantly - an ever stronger culture to engage in. Whereas on a more traditional education path you need to take time away from business to learn and study, after which you are on your own again to apply things in practice.

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