Humane Tech: A Vision for Human Community and Flourishing

by James Tucker | at Minnebar spring 2020 (canceled)

Have you succumbed to ghost-scrolling?

On a serious note, many of you would agree that something's not right about how we use our devices and screens.

Adam Alter, a psychology professor at NYU, writes in Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked:

"Tech isn’t morally good or bad until it’s wielded by the corporations that fashion it for mass consumption. Apps and platforms can be designed to promote rich social connections; or, like cigarettes, they can be designed to addict. Today, unfortunately, many tech developments do promote addiction."

How did we get to this point - where the innovations championed as harbingers of human connection have actually made many of us addicts and real community harder to come by?

Navigating through our digital dysfunction is not as simple as...

Nor it is remedied by pointing fingers or wallowing in shame over our habits.

So join me as we explore two things -

First, how did our digital culture got to this point.

And second, what we - many of us designers and makers of digital experiences - can do to foster authentic community/wellbeing among the thousands, millions, and billions whose lives we steer with our products.

All levels

James Tucker

James is a software engineer at soona in NE Minneapolis, where he works with Vue and Rails on a daily basis. When he's not building things, you can usually find James hiking, spending time with his wife Megan, trying a new peaty Scotch, or making horrible screeching noises on his violin.

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