Mikey is a Graduate of MIT Media Lab, Founder of Consciousness Hackers (A Global movement of thousands) and Lecturer at Stanford University. Mikey leads workshops, plays with emerging bio-related wellness technology and is a prolific speaker on the subject of Human-Machine impact on society. You can learn more about Mikey on his website www.mikeysiegel.com. Incidentally Mikey’s last name is pronounced like “Seagull” ;-)
Mikey’s thesis work at the MIT media lab addressed the question: How does technology influence human belief and behavior?
His question now is: What is the greatest, most profound and meaningful roll technology can have on Society?
How can the technology we create be in harmony with the natural human rhythms?
I was touched by Mikey’s introspection, honesty and clarity about both his personal goals and his unique ability to abstract computing use trends into larger frameworks of Humanity and Social good.
A common thread amongst Entrepreneurs in our Western Society is they’ve ‘checked the boxes’ that Society suggests are the ‘right’ ones:
Ivey League Schools (check)
Corporate Job doing amazing things (Check)…
Other social ladder accomplishments (check, check, check).
And, yet, something is missing. So, a new leg of the journey emerges, where the Entrepreneur gets to take the trip inward, and learn about what makes them unique, what common threads they have with other Humans, life, and ultimately the Cosmos. We deconstruct the Human Mechanisms of thought, emotions, and biomechanics, the intersection of all these moving parts, and then reconstruct them in the framework of Society, Biology, and eventually the nature of life in the Universe as we know it.
Our conversation primarily centered on the question:
How can we use emerging computer technologies in this current society to help Humans feel better more consistently?
One of Mikey’s current projects is a collaboration with HeartMath www.heartmath.com, a company in the Santa Cruz area that has been very successful with their consumer-based heart monitor to assist in Human Beings’ wellbeing.
Mikey has modified their technology to be a ‘community’ use device. In his ‘Group Flow’ experiences he’s been hosting gatherings around the Bay Area where many people gather in a circle, attach heart and respiration monitors, and see and hear their own heart and breath.
The audio and visual signals can be modified and harmonized in the group. I participated in one of these and it was super interesting, and a little edgy for me. Edgy because it was challenging for me to open up my seemingly very personal internal biological processes to others who I don’t know. It was also expansive and thrilling.
I’m excited to witness and participate in guiding each other towards meeting our true desires, the values-based meaning underlying much of our searching.
Programs and Tools which enable a Human to live more in harmony with life’s natural rhythms tend to involve:
- Deepening a Human’s relationship with their biological being.
- Expanding that relationship out to others in loving and connected ways.
In Mikey and my own background we see Technology and Gadgets as potential accelerators, tools, towards those goals. Tech is a tool (inside our realm of Nature) which can be used, blended and folded in our Human experience for the purpose of greater Harmony, Joy and Wellbeing.
I was honored to have time with Mikey. He’s both a vocal thought leader and a pioneer in the use of Tech for integration of it with Human’s wellbeing. His Scientific rigor is a wonderful bridge for the much needed gap between our fast-paced evolution of computers with Humans’ wellbeing.