Tech digest #8: making tech for a sustainable future
Conference: INTERACT - Course: Foundations of Humane tech - tech & world: True innovation requires big tech, academia, and government to work together - Softy: The 8 elements of flow
This week:
Conference: INTERACT
Course: Foundations of Humane Technology
Technology & world: True innovation requires big tech, academia, and government to work together
Softy: The 8 elements of the flow experience
Art: Online performance: The Menstrual Ovulatory Cycle
This week’s digest is inspired by international woman’s day and learning to make technology that helps the world move towards a more sustainable future.
Techy
Conference
INTERACT: a community-driven conference for Tech leaders
This is a 1-day conference for engineering leaders organized by Dev Interrupted. What I like: The line-up is amazing, starting with the fact there are many women leaders who I look forward to learning from, and second, is community-driven.
Course
Foundations of Humane Technology
Made by the center of humane tech, which I have been following since they launched Social Dilemma. This is a free, self-paced course to learn the tenets of humane tech: respect human nature, minimize harmful consequences, center on values, create shared understanding, support fairness and justice, and help people thrive.
As tech makers, learning about these ideas, and finding a way to activate these tenets in our day-to-day job, is one step that can make a big difference for the generations to come.
Technology & world
True innovation requires big tech, academia, and government to work together by Shirley Ann Jackson
Shirley Ann Jackson is such an inspiring woman, she is an American physicist, the first African-American woman to have earned a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the first woman appointed chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 18th resident of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (and the first woman to do it), and the first African-American woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
In this article, she explains how, and why technology, academia, and government have to work together to find solutions to the fast pace arising problems the world has today, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or climate change. As tech makers, we need to be informed about these perspectives, so that we can start being catalyzers for the change the world needs.
Softy
Flow
The 8 elements of the flow experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Chick–sent–meehayee) describes eight components of the flow experience, which in Csikszentmihalyi words is:
“a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (1990).”
The 8 elements describe what happens, or needs to happen for flow to exist. Understanding these elements as an individual contributor, or as a leader, can enable you to be happier in your day-to-day job, or/and enable others to do so.
Art
Online performance: The Menstrual Ovulatory Cycle
Is a 24-minute video performance on how the menstrual ovulatory cycle works, and the effects it can have on women who have it.
it contains metaphorical images and emotional representations of each phase corresponding to the hormonal changes. The way each person experiences each phase, the health conditions and variations are multiple and almost unapproachable.
I found it a great piece of work, it is great to watch as a woman with menstruation because it visualizes what happens with your body in each of its phases, and as a person who does not have it because it informs you on what happens to women who have their period.
Thank you for making it this far, this is a small experiment I am doing, to read, re-read, learn and share tools that catch my interest on my journey as an engineering manager and as a tech maker for a more sustainable future.
Until the next
Daniela