Tools for Thriving – Randy Fernando

Freedom Matters

This week, we welcome Randima Fernando. Randy works at the intersection of technology, mindfulness and social impact, helping to find ethical solutions to hard problems. Here's a co-founder of Center for Humane Technology (CHT), a nonprofit whose mission is to align technology with humanity's best interests. The Center for Humane Technology was featured in the Emmy winning film, The Social Dilemma, which has been seen by over a hundred million people globally.

This episode is the first in our new series on the tools that we use, where we discuss, how technology mediates our lived experiences.

In this wide ranging conversation, we delve into some of the systemic issues of the technology industry today, which are now shaping the way that we live. We discuss how business incentives, not human interests, govern design, how no tools are created neutral and why we all, users and designers alike, need to understand what thriving means to us so that we can live these values, eyes wide open, in the tools that we create and use.

Randy was previously the founding Executive Director at Mindful Schools, a nonprofit that has taught mindfulness to millions of kids and over 50,000 educators worldwide. Before that, Randy led many award-winning projects and authored 3 books on 3D graphics over seven years at NVIDIA, where he was also inaugural board member of the NVIDIA Foundation. Randy also serves on the board of Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

CHT offers several helpful resources:

Their free online course, Foundations of Humane Technology, helps product teams create technology that treats attention and intention as sacred, protects well-being, and builds our collective capacity to address humanity’s most urgent challenges. (https://www.humanetech.com/course)

Their podcast, Your Undivided Attention, has over 14 million downloads, and explores the incredible power that technology has over our lives — and how we can use it to catalyze a humane future. (https://www.humanetech.com/podcast)

Their free Youth Toolkit helps youth ages 13-25, as well as their parents and teachers, navigate—and push to change—a broken social media environment. (https://www.humanetech.com/youth)

Freedom Matters Host and Producer: Georgie Powell https://www.sentientdigitalconsulting.com/

Music and audio production: Toccare https://spoti.fi/3bN4eqO