We are living in a world of extremes right now. There is headspace that requires you to sit down, and meditate "mindfully", and then there is youtube, that sucks us into it's various algorithmic rabbit holes, without us even realising it.

Why do we have to set a time to be mindful, why can't we cherish and be mindful about every passing moment? Why can't tech help us with that?

With this insight, I spent the past 3 years building a context, and emotion aware music personalisation, and sharing app. That among other things, really focuses on eliminating all the choice overload from our lives, and not waste our time scrolling and searching, here is an example:

"You are cooking, and want to listen to some music. You want to listen to some upbeat music, that has no speech in it. Can be anything. You have become quite bored of your playlists, and try to find a playlist now. It turns out majority of your cooking time, you spent finding music, rather than listening to it!"

Has something similar ever happened to you? Now, I built a system to solve exactly this, and it turns out that some people find it really useful, and it has literally changed their lives, but majority of the people are so used to current ways of tech, that they don't even care to augment and celebrate their moments. Scrolling, and cooking. Scrolling and talking. These things always seem to happen in parallel for people, and they keep asking for features that resemble the current apps for that reason, and I see this entire situation as quite sad.

Does any of you ever use music to enhance whatever activity you are indulged in from moment to moment? Do you ever feel the need for something similar?

If it's acceptable, and people want to check it out, I'll post the links in the comments later. But, I am more interested in understanding your thoughts on this.

Hi all! Andrew here, co-founder of Digital Wellness Collective and the late Siempo (a mindful interface for Android).

I've been reflecting this winter on some of the things I've learned over the last few years. The question of "what and how should we teach the next generation of technologists" has become quite the muse. I wrote a blog post articulating my analysis of the situation and proposing a curriculum. Reflections/claps/shares welcomed 🙏🏼

Key Takeaways:

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

• We need to develop new curricula, pedagogy & communities of practice that empower humane technologists with the capacities, awarenesses, values and experiences that are essential to create in a more life-honoring way.

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

The cats out the bag. People are really fking addicted to AI companions / girlfriends. And AI is making reels / tiktoks insanely engaging and personalized, to the point that it's hard to stop.

What are you doing to combat this?

Just throwing this out there, please don't just focus on your phone when it comes to being mindful. Everything is fair game when it comes to distractions. Make everything minimal and difficult. It'll really change you.

Hey everyone! I'm excited to share a new app I've been working on called Hyperplace. It allows you to collect, explore and develop ideas that matters to you. It offers a unique design that helps you to organize ideas both in linear form, where thoughts flow from one to the next, and visual, side-by-side layouts that allow key information to stay in sight. This flexibility helps you to pull things out of their context, explore them further and put them back together in meaningful new ways.

You can try it on: https://hyper.place

This is the first public introduction of Hyperplace to the world and we thought that this community is the right place to do so. We'd greatly appreciate any ideas, thoughts, or feedback you might have.

Our hypothesis is that by taking the time to reflect on why certain information resonates with us, we begin to understand its connections to our existing knowledge, forming a personal and meaningful relationship with it. We not only strengthen our ability to remember it but also create multiple pathways to access that information.

We believe that by actively exploring your interests with Hyperplace, you will become more aware of the information and ideas that resonate with you throughout your day.

I want to share an iPhone app, called Goldilocks (website, App Store link), that my friends and I built over the last few months as a side project. We’ve tried everything to use our phones less and limit distractions, and eventually decided to build the thing we wish existed :)

Goldilocks detects phone pickups and screen time, and lets you easily add friends to the app. We’ve found the social accountability really works, and it’s fun and effective to encouraging (and compete) with each other.

Sharing in case it's helpful or interesting to you!

Hi - I built a wellbeing app for people, businesses that combines therapy principles with virtual reality accessible on your phone.

We are an old school freemium app... meaning there is a pure free version of the app available to download with the option to upgrade via subscription.

Please feel free to give it a go and watch our demo vid.
Would love some feedback!

AnamVR Android -> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anamvr&hl=en_IE

AnamVR iOS -> https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/anamvr/id6499339767

We’re a student-led, independent research team studying how people use health and wellness apps, especially those focused on heart health. Whether you're tracking blood pressure, monitoring your heart rate, or just trying to stay ahead of certain conditions, your insights can help shape the next wave of user-friendly, evidence-based tools.

• Take 5-10 minutes to share your experience and help us improve the future of heart health tech.

• As a thank you, participants will be entered into a raffle for a $50 gift card: we'll announce the winner here on this subreddit after 4 weeks!

• Your feedback helps us figure out what features actually matter and what’s still missing.

• Form here: https://forms.gle/jf6hdpmJTuHyUVU77

Hi all,

As someone living a very tech-intentional life (iPod, Light Phone, E Ink Tablet, WiFi off at bedtime!), I have just started a UK Government petition to help ensure that non-digital choices remain available for future generations.

The petition has already gained support from some major household names who appear in my campaign video — including Dame Imelda Staunton, Stephen Fry and Midge Ure.

If this community believes (as I do) that our less-digital choices shouldn’t be dictated by the growing alliance between tech companies and governments, please consider signing and sharing the petition if you're a UK citizen. I can reach people in entertainment through my work as an artist, but I don't have the resources for a large-scale campaign — so your support truly means a lot.

This is about pro-choice in how we live. Digital minimalism should remain a protected right.

📽️ Watch the campaign video
🖊️ Sign the petition

Thanks so much 🙏

— Tim Arnold

I am excited to announce a new IOS app. It's called the Betweenclock and you can download from the App Store.

Here's a brief description:

When we think of work, we tend to focus on a particular group of activities - the meetings, events and tasks that fill our calendars. These are what you might call the A-listers of our calendars. But what about the B-listers, our breaks?

Breaks are one of those areas that we have a habit of ignoring: rarely do we think about them as a goal or action. If anything, we tend to see them in the opposite light, as periods when we are being purposefully unproductive.

Betweenclock wants to change that. It wants to put your breaks at the heart of your calendar, to elevate everything - meetings, tasks and breaks - to the same level.

Of course, there are plenty of apps that do a similar thing. For the most part, they all work in the same way - they're timers (or what is usually known as 'Pomodoro' apps). Betweenclock takes a different approach. It's not a timer but a place of reflection and mindfulness, a way of shifting your attention from a task to something more restful.

The app requires a modest subscription (£1.99/year) but if you want to give it a try, I am more than happy to send you a promo code. In return, your feedback/comments would be massively helpful.

Cheers, Will

There are both positive and negative aspects of social media. One of the negative aspects is the result of the advertising revenue model. One possible solution would be to implement a subscription revenue model instead.

Would you be willing to pay for a subscription to Facebook that includes no advertisements?

Hello!
I am working on a curated repository & newsletter with products and services that are created to make humans and humanity better, not just profit.
It's inspired on the Humane Technology movement. I strongly empathize with your aim for less addictive and distracting tech. And complementary to that mission, I think there is a positive spin to it and that's where Humanity Centred comes in place.

Newsletter & Library

Every-other-week best practice(s) about (tech) products, services and initiatives that are putting humanity first, not just profit.

Website

http://humanity-centred.xyz

Hope that you find this interesting and it's worth your reading time. If you actually are and want to support me, please subscribe!

Thanks,

Pim Minderman

Founder of Humanity Centred

Just watched the playback of WWDC21. For anyone who isn’t aware: Apple is bringing awesome notification control to iPhones, which will hopefully solve one of the major problems I’ve had with all phones that is how do you balance concentration and getting the notifications you need.

I try to use technology as a tool only. I watch TV in the evening before bed, but that is my ideal maximum amount of tech use for entertainment (besides music and podcasts on my phone). I don't read or watch the news online. I only read the daily newspaper (print), and I just bought a subscription to the New Yorker to add something to my news rotation.

I was keeping track of my schedule in a paper day planner, but I found that if I had to change something in my schedule, it was too much of a hassle to try and remember to update it on both the page for the month and the page for the day, as well as white out conflicting things and try to re-arrange them. So I'm now using Outlook on my laptop to make my daily agenda.

I was also doing all of my writing (I'm working on a novel) in a notebook before copying it into my computer for the first draft. However, I'm finding during the editing process that it's a needless hassle to mark things out, draw arrows, and re-write sentences and then have to try and decipher that once it's time to enter it into my computer for the edited draft.

To summarize, this is a list of everything I've started doing since I started trying to limit technology usage:

• Got a subscription to the daily [print] newspaper

• Deleted all social media from my phone that can be accessed on my laptop

• Deleted email from my phone (Again, it can be accessed from my laptop)

• Started using my phone in grayscale

• Leaving my phone downstairs at night

• Started keeping track of my expenses in a paper ledger, checked for accuracy against my bank statements

• Limited my access to social media and non-essential apps on my phone (what little of them are still on there) between 9:45 AM and 7:00 PM

• Trying to force myself to read instead of watch TV when bored

Any additional advice? What has everyone else been doing?