To Tweet or Not to Tweet…That Is Not the Question

To be the Awareness or Not the Awareness IS.

It's time we all took BOLD CONSCIOUS ACTION and use technology for good

I joined Twitter in October 2012 — in the eight years since I have tweeted an astonishing total of 72 times.

In truth, I have heavily resisted Twitter and many other forms of social media, especially Instagram (a record six posts in four years), and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Facebook for years. 

When I first joined Facebook, it was incredibly rewarding to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen or heard from in decades; but at some point, the experience stopped being fun and became what I now see as my “drug of choice” at the time. 

For a long time, the first thing I would do in the morning was jump on FB, only to look up and realize that an hour had passed without accomplishing anything. I began to notice a gnawing feeling in my gut and heart that something wasn’t right, and frequently felt down and unenthusiastic. 

What was going on? I’m blessed to come wired with a pretty high Happiness Set Point, and the way I felt was foreign to me. A student of self-inquiry, mindfulness, and neurobiology, I slowly started to connect the dots that something in my brain was affecting my outlook. 

However, it wasn’t until I attended The World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship (WSIE) in 2012 that I was introduced to the mysterious world of Captology. As defined on Wikipedia,

“Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This area of inquiry explores the overlapping space between persuasion in general (influence, motivation, behavior change, etc.) and computing technology.”

The WSIE is committed to finding ways in which innovation and technology can be a force of good for humanity and the planet. One session looked at how gamification and other tools can help advance developments in fintech, reduce crime, mentor at-risk-youth, and shift negative behavioral patterns. I was intrigued by the possibility of using apps to enhance the Conditional Cash Transfer projects we were financing at the Inter-American Development Bank, where I worked at the time to promote the financial inclusion of people in poverty. 

But wait — you mean to say we can alter people’s habits by persuading them in such subtle ways they don’t even know they’re being persuaded? Wouldn’t that basically be manipulation? Is that ethical? Is this already happening to us? In fact, at WSIE I learned that social media platforms are already powered by these technologies and that most games and applications are designed to override your willpower by consistently activating your reptilian brain. Their business models were consciously (or unconsciously) designed to keep us addicted: the more screen time they capture, the more money they earn. 

This sparked not only a personal dilemma — to Tweet, or not to Tweet? — but also my fear that collectively, we were creating something that would ruin the best of humanity. I returned home determined to stop using social media altogether, only to quickly realize how difficult that was. Many of my working groups used Facebook as a central medium, and no matter how much effort I put into resisting the incessant scrolling, I would always end up glued to the screen for way longer than I wanted. 

I felt bad, a lot. After all, how many times have you stepped away from social media feeling really great? Or, more specifically: how many times have you stepped away from browsing social media, when you received zero likes on something you posted and felt amazing? The correlation is easy — we look for validation through likes. I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard before, but 8 years ago, this was news to me.  

I knew what was happening behind the screen. I knew my brain was being hijacked or at best “persuaded,” and yet most of the time I was still unable to exercise my will and stay focused and present. I quickly learned that in terms of well-being and technology, knowing means nothing — practicing awareness means everything. 

I was also determined to learn more about technology, neuroscience, and ethics. A couple of years later, in a moment of synchronicity, I met both Tristan Harris at a mindfulness workshop in LA and Mikey Seigel, through a connection on LinkedIn — both are experts in technology, consciousness, ethics. I am forever grateful to them for their work in leading the way towards a more humane use of technology. 

Through Tristan, I learned about Stanford’s Persuasion Lab*, his role as Google’s Chief Ethicist, and his concerns with technology. Mikey had similar worries. What united us was one question: how can we use technology to solve systemic problems?

In the summer of 2016, I co-founded a prototype called the Finance, Mindfulness, and Technology Lab (FMTLab)*. For two days, 26 innovators from the Finance, Neuroscience, Mindfulness, and Technology sectors came together at MIT’s Sloan School of Business. Led by Otto Scharmer, Founder of the Presencing Institute, we explored ways in which we could use technology for good and address large-system problems. Tristan and Mikey were amongst the participants. Our primary focus was on making a positive impact on education on a global scale. 

Our hypothesis was that if the vast majority of younger generations (the primary target of Captology) could be educated to use technology for good, helping them understand how their brains work, how they can continuously develop their consciousness and understanding of how they can operate from the highest and best aspects of what it means to be human, the less at risk they would be of being manipulated by technnology and use it as the powerful tool that it is. We saw them empowered, compassionate, changemakers of their own lives and their communities.

If we achieved this vision, we could target several systemic core nodes of poverty and environmental devastation at the same time.

After all, when you think about it, phones, tablets, and Netflix have become not only the primary nannies of hundreds of millions of children and adolescents (and yes, of adults, too), they are also shaping our world-views, our values, their principles and our sense of purpose on this earth.

What are we — or aren’t we — learning from it all?

The biggest takeaway from that first meeting is that technology is here to stay, and will continue to grow exponentially. The business models that enable technology to thrive through addiction need to stop, and letting people know about the truth about how apps are designed is not enough to change people’s behavior.

...the problem isn't that people lack willpower; it's that "there are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have"-

Quote from Tristan Harris. Irresistible- The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked by Adam Alter.

Let's fast forward to August 2020

According to experts, COVID-19 has accelerated our adoption of new technologies. Dejan Ljustina, the CEE TMT Industry Leader, stated that

“The pandemic has had tragic consequences for millions of people across the globe, who have been either directly affected by the virus, have lost someone dear, or have suffered due to the lockdown measures necessary in order to contain the spread of the virus, with so many losing their jobs. Yet, the crisis has also triggered a tremendous acceleration in the digital transformation of the global economy.”

Is this “tremendous acceleration” the silver lining of the tragedy that has been COVID-19? What kind of digital transformation are we talking about — more people glued to screens without being able to exercise their will, for longer periods of time? Faster AI adoption by organizations without a clear labor market transition strategy?

Daniel Dines, CEO of UiPath, notes

“We have an opportunity to skip a generation in our development toward digital technology and remote working if we move fast and don’t miss on the opportunity that this wave of digital transformation is bringing.”

Hold on — is this actually what we want? Everyone working from home? If we want this to happen, how do we want it to happen? Do we wait? Skip a generation? Does it happen in all countries? For all populations? Does that include the 3.8 billion people (UN estimate) of people who are offline? Or the large percentage of those who lack Meaningful Connectivity?

“We have meaningful connectivity when we can use the internet every day using an appropriate device with enough data and a fast connection.” a4ai.org

Granted, some countries are exploring a UBI — Universal Basic Income — but really? Is this the type of world, the new, better normal, that we really want? To have the vast majority of humanity, white-collar professionals included, living off of a limited basic income so that The Big 9 Tech Titans can decide the next phase of our evolution? 

 I have no way of knowing what Mr. Daniel Dines or Mr. Dejan Ljustina believe about the future, and whether using technology as a force for good is high on their agenda. I could not find their positions on this matter. For all I know, they could both fervent proponents of Tech4good.

In fact, I believe that most people working in tech want the best for humanity, but that we’re all stuck in a structure — a Newtonian, Descartes, Industrialized world-view and mindset — that says we are separate, that all of life is either/or, that competition is king, that idolizes infinite growth, that measures shareholder value in quarterly gains. 

Within this worldview, survival is the only way to go. There are no other options. Either you grow, or you die — the idea that you could make a positive impact, engineer humanely-designed technology, and turn a profit is fairly radical. 

To make things more complex, the race for technology is now “the race for world domination” with Made In China 2025 and more recently with China Standards 2035, so even if countries like the US want to take on a more awareness-based approach to the use of technology, having to compete with countries like China, may make it even harder to create a more humane technology. Indeed this is truly a wicked problem for everyone who cares.

And yet, I am an optimist at heart. I see a shift beginning, even within tech, as more and more people speak about how to change the course we’re on. Organizations like Tristan Harris’ Center for Humane Technology, as well as Financial Labs Solution, Ayadee.io, Rymedi, and networks like Peter Diamandis’ Abundance 360, are all starting to ask the hard questions and more importantly take the BOLD ACTION required. Will conscious tech leaders be able to set the Standards for Technology for the rest of the world? I hope so. 

As I have said in previous posts, I believe we have become Digital beings — it is going to be up to each of us to embrace this dimension of ourselves. It’s not a question of “to do (tweet), or not to do (tweet),” instead, it is a question of who we decide to be within this Digital Dimension, and how that affects our personal and collective behavior. I may be naive, but I believe there is still time to make the shift and create a better future for all of us — we just need to allow our higher selves to lead the way.  

Imagine what you can do with the time you currently invest lost misusing social media? Maybe you will decide to join the thousands of people and organizations who are transforming technology into a force for good. 

Your life counts. Trading your social media fix to be more present in the lives of the people you love matters. Choosing to live a life you love makes the world a better place.

*The FMTLab continues to explore new, more potent technologies, cryptocurrencies, and other systems innovations to give birth to a new version of the FMTLab by the spring of 2021. If you are interested in being a part of this group please send me a DM. I will be happy to hear from you and find ways we can collaborate.