human works design - building meaningful futures - Issue #12
A conscious revolution
About a year ago I wrote “How we are contributing to a healthy society is the real question every responsible leader has to ask himself. Leaders who understand this are the winners of tomorrow.”
Today, more and more media are reporting about the negative outcomes and implications technology can play, like The Ethical Minefields of Technology or the Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend articles.
“Fixing the issues requires technology leaders to have a much wider view of the world. The industry doesn’t need more programmers, it urgently needs more women, ethicists and philosophers.”
I’m sure most of the leaders at the big technology companies have good intentions, lately however, the outcomes can be quite catastrophic - as Mark Zuckerberg showed last week in a completely avoidable public-relations disaster demonstrating the new Facebook Spaces app exploring a real destination like hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Hello Silicon Valley?
Or what about the ethics of the current bitcoin craze and the greed of many investors, traders and speculators, knowing that processing a single bitcoin transaction consumes more than 5,000 times as much energy as using a Visa credit card.
With human works design, we want to focus on what technology - as a good force - can bring to us, to improve humanity and reflect on the ethical and moral questions before we develop new things, making sure to check what is going on around you and your business, thinking about the impact of your actions, and how your products and/or services can impact society, our planet and our future generations.
We need to heal our thinking, in order to heal our world.
The scientific revolution improved the state of humanity in many ways, but it also fostered a worldview neither ultimately helpful nor deeply humane. That worldview is mechanistic and rationalistic, without the slightest bow to the primacy of consciousness. Yet consciousness supplies moral vision and ethical purpose, without which all the science in the world won’t keep us from destroying ourselves or the planet on which we live.
“Humanity doesn’t need to make another machine; it needs to make another choice. We need to consider the possibility of another way, another option, another path for the human race to follow…one in which we do not bow before the laws of science, but rather bow before the laws of love. The mind will no longer be our master, but our servant. Science will no longer be a false god, but a truer help.”
Have you asked yourself recently, what does it mean to be wealthy?
Looking it up in the dictionary, here’s what comes up:
1. an abundance of valuable possessions or money.
2. a plentiful supply of a particular desirable thing.
3. well-being.
It’s time to invert the order of things in our dictionaries, thoughts and actions. Maybe it’s time to learn from the wisdom gathered over thousands of years by our indigenous Amazonian tribes? Read How to be happy — lessons from an Amazonian tribe.
“You need to understand your world view. The problem is most people don’t usually think this through. Your world view determines everything else in your life because it determines your decisions, it determines your relationships, it determines your level of confidence. What we believe determines our behaviour and our behaviour determines what we become in life.”
or as Umair Haque puts it “You Are Always Becoming What You Think the World Is”.
“When we think the world is beautiful. We see the heart stopping beauty in every sunset, rainfall, autumn. We are willing to look beneath people’s anger and fear, and find the beauty in them. We can be gentle, kind, creative, loving, defiantly grateful, wise. Now we are beautiful, too. We are always becoming what we think the world is. It is as true for you as it is for me. It is a great and abiding principle of human existence, when you really stop and reflect on it.”
The only answer lies within us, we need to find the answers to what we want in our lives and how we want to live our lives in the future. Only when we vibrate positively to what we really want in our lives, we can create a community and movement that can outgrow the negative spiral many of us are in today.
For this, we are expanding the knowledge of this newsletter to share stories from other people in our network working as a force for good and positivity towards our common future. If you have an interesting story, startup or project you’d like to share with us, please get in touch.
In this week’s newsletter you can read more articles on conscious business, the future of humanism and finance, how we use Socratic Design in companies to enlighten their dark matter, our ecological footprints and our own activities during Web Summit and Mobile World Congress.
Enjoy!
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human works design activities
human works design at The House of Beautiful Business in Lisbon
human works design is pleased to participate again at The House of Beautiful Business, taking place in Lisbon before and during Web Summit. The House of Beautiful Business is a pop-up community for meaningful conversations about technology and humanity. During the week-long event, the House will serve as salon, stage, and sandbox for people who are keen on re-humanising business in a playful and intimate setting.
We are offering a workshop in The Palacio on Saturday, November 4 (15:30 – 17:30) on how to elevate humanity by designing a conscious business.
The House of Beautiful Business is opening its doors on Saturday for FREE, so make sure you sign up and book your seat for our workshop!
On top, we have another 5 membership passes available for our readers (value €450/pass) with access to all programs from November 3 - November 10, 2017 in The Studio and The Palacio. Please send us your thoughts on conscious business and include a great example of a conscious business from yourself or in your network. TIP: you can increase your chances to win a pass by liking us on our social media channels :)
Mobile Sunday and IoT Stars at Mobile World Congress 2018
Tech.eu and human works design are teaming up again for Mobile Sunday and IoT Stars at Mobile World Congress 2018. If you’re interested in sponsorship, please contact us. This time, we are offering 3 unique sponsorship opportunities: Mobile Sunday 2018, Mobile Sunday VIP, a brand new opportunity for 2018 (host your own VIP event during Mobile Sunday!) and IoT Stars, a unique IoT startup pitching event.
human works design contributions
human works design co-founder Canay Atalay wrote an article on Socratic Design for Harvard Business Review Turkey and one about The Future of Humanism and Finance for Digital Age. We also introduce our new newsletter contributor on sustainability, Şeyda Dağdeviren Hill, links below.
Socratic Design - Enlightening the dark matter -
Read about human works design co-founder Canay Atalay’s journey of enlightening the dark matter within companies using Socratic Design. “Philosophy is not only to theorise about the world, but also to change it. Purpose of philosophy is to articulate the real problems that exist, but have not yet been articulated. (…) True transformation seeks to destroy false conscience, and articulates something in the present that beckons the future.”
The future of finance and humanism
The capitalist system is being destroyed by external innovation shocks and technology. This is not the time to mourn at all because the existing system lately has been disappointing us with improving lives of humanity as billions are still living in poverty and it has been pushing us over the cliff-edge of climate change and ecological collapse. Ashes of capitalism has the potential of flourishing into a promising system as the birth of a new humanity, which I see as an ‘unstoppable evolution’. It is in our nature to invent something better, not only to survive but also to thrive.
Our ecological footprints
human works design contributor Şeyda Dağdeviren Hill explains everything you always wanted to know about our ecological footprints, how you can calculate your personal carbon and water footprints and act upon your situation. It’s revealing and a wake-up call for everyone we can always do more to contribute to healthier planet.
Conscious business
A Future Thinking Canvas by Frank Diana
Our exponential pace is due in part to the overwhelming number of building blocks available to innovate. Understanding how these building blocks combine provides a glimpse into possible futures. In this visual, dots connect to portray the building blocks that are likely to extend our healthy lives – a key emerging future scenario.
Collective Intelligence Is the Root of Human Progress
In an interview with Matt Ridely, Singularity Hub discusses collective intelligence and what that means to humanity’s progress as a species.
Localising and distributing production | Maker Culture
How can we zoom in and out in scale and over time in order to understand the relationship among ‘resilience’, new production modes and citizen engagement? Will bringing production into cities only engage the already privileged, who have the technological skills needed as employees, who can afford high rents as owners and who can afford bespoke products as customers? How do we truly foster new ways to value exchanges, to corrode the current neoliberal dominance of market value as the ruler for everything? We have a lot of work to do.
Children First World Design
After Canay’s wake up call in our past issue for a Children First World Design, we got a lot of positive response towards such action. You can still participate in our Children First World Design survey.
What is a “CHILDREN FIRST WORLD”?
“A world where children are most important, where business growth and profit targets are only instrumental goals to serve better to children…where "childish” is not a bad word but a good one; highlighting most important attributes of an innovative human, such as curiosity, collaboration and creativity…where children have a saying about their own life designs, based on their own values.“
Meanwhile, read all about how the Kaxinawa Huni Kuin (an ethnic group of indigenous tribal Brazilian natives) people’s ancient Amazonian secrets can heal the mind and body of Western civilisation.
Healers of civilisation
“Children play all day and in the month I lived with them, they never had a fight. Yelling, screaming, controversy and boredom they have no knowledge of. Their voices are pleasant, smiling, giggly, shy, seductive, gentle, charming like a cuddly cartoon. Paradise, even the trees are growing sweet fruit candies. All of their time is wracked with singing, silence, warm glances, humour, toothed giggle and attention. For them every moment is sacred and therefore any action. Purity of talking and thinking is normal to them. Adults do not elevate the voice and do not show the authority. The society does not know violence, injustice and competition. Their wealth is their culture and the spiritual world.”
The Decline of Play and Rise in Children’s Mental Disorders
Anyone who looks honestly at the experiences of students where freedom, play, and self-directed exploration prevail , knows that there is another way. We don’t need to drive kids crazy to educate them. Given freedom and opportunity, without coercion, young people educate themselves. They do so joyfully, and in the process develop intrinsic values, personal self-control, and emotional wellbeing.
Danish schools have figured out the best way to teach empathy
Empathy, or the ability to read another person’s emotions, is a critical life skill. Happiness is a complex concept, so perhaps simply recognising that empathy is a skill and not an inherent trait. Kids need to practice it the same way they work at math or soccer. There’s a useful lesson for non-Danish parents and teachers too. If we want our children to be kind and think about others, we need to model that behaviour and think of how, exactly, to teach it.
To connect or disconnect...
When In-Person Conversation Is Better Than Texting
Sherry Turkle, the Director of the MIT “Initiative on Technology and Self,” discusses the relationship between talking in real life and cultivating empathy.
Smartphones Are Weapons of Mass Manipulation, and This Guy Is Declaring War on Them
Tristan Harris thinks big tech is taking advantage of us all. Can its power be used for good?
The Future of Work
The Future of Skills: Trends impacting on US and UK employment in 2030 | Nesta
To prepare our children and those already in employment for the world of work in decades to come, we need to better understand what that future is going to look like, what skills, knowledge and attributes will be important for success. Excellent report on the drivers of change shaping the future of US and UK employment and the need for different skills.
A framework for understanding the future of work
In a recent issue of Deloitte Review, John Hagel, Jeff Schwartz, and Josh Bersin suggest a framework for understanding the future of work and its implications for individuals, organisations, and governments. HR Times caught up with John and Jeff to hear more about the framework and how HR leaders and professionals can apply it.
What Motivates Employees More: Rewards or Punishments?
It depends whether you’re trying to encourage or discourage action. When we notice others making suboptimal decisions, we automatically fast forward in our heads and visualise their failure, leading us to warn them about the devastation we envision. But what the research here suggests is that we need to consciously overcome our habit of trying to scare people into action, and instead highlight the rewards that come with reaching our goals.
Genetics
The ethics of gene editing
Advances in molecular biology are bringing the possibility of editing the human genome ever closer. But do we think this is ethical?
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We are delighted and grateful to be able to do what we love and can share these wonderful stories and knowledge with you. How about you?
You can read the previous editions of this newsletter here.
If you’d like to book us for a presentation, workshop, or to contribute to an awesome project please get in touch.
Be kind to yourself and your loved ones.
Have a great week!
Rudy and Canay.