Internetdagarna interviews - introduction by BertillaV

[BertillaV]

Tell us about yourself? What are you working on and why are you at Internetdagarna?

I am founder and Director of QuantumThinkers, an organisation devoted to safeguard societal wellbeing through technological empowerment.
MindLab.space is the operative part of our community, an environment for research and design on biosensors. We exist to increase physical and mental wellness through technology. We want to see the end of technophobia and victim-mentality that aliments a fear-based view of the future and prevents many from feeling in control of their own lives.

I have lovely and talented colleagues who are both skilled developers and amazing artists. We started about a year ago and there are circa 60 people on our Slack channel. We hold weekly meetings in Malmö and would love to see more groups forming across Europe. Stpln is the wonderful co-working space that hosts and supports us, and they are the reason I could be here today. MindLab meetings are varied: sometimes we invite artist, sometimes we sit down and code, and other times we get lost in existential reflections upon society and technology.
We love to think about the Future and how to co-create it.

When did something related to the internet last make you hopeful or happy?

When I saw that there was a local group starting up about distributed networks in Malmö. I have been studying blockchain for the last 8 months, found it fascinating. Unfortunately I met resistance from older people who didn’t believe in peer 2 peer. I now found people with a lot of expertise and prestige talking about glocal technology, which is refreshing to see. I could finally see the meeting point, between distributed systems, biosensing and data awareness, becoming clearer.

When did something related to the internet last make you upset, afraid or angry?

When I had to use my friend’s laptop which is not shielded from third party commercial information. I have become so used to living ad-free that I had forgot just how much noise there is out there. It was nearly scary.
I could not help thinking about the neurological effects of constant thought pollution caused by advertising; on top of it all, when I offered my friend to limit the violation of their mental space, they declined, explaining how they were completely fine with being sold and targeted.

name: BertillaV

[MariaEuler]

This sounds super interesting!

let’s connect! (Also potentially with the iGEM network!)

And this was the event in Malmö:

Event: What does tech look like on a finite, post-climate change earth?

[Edgeryders-Fest-FB-1200x628-zenna-01] Organiser: @zelf Location: Lodgatan in Östra Hamnen, Malmö Event intro/description: Re-Web is a day dedicated to those who wish for a more sustainable infrastructure and system. We aim to explore how we can prepare for a finite, post-climate change earth through practical and hands on action, initiated by conversation. There will be no speakers, instead we have facilitated conversations, harvested and shared with a larger European network of Edger…

[hugi]

Also, @nadia wrote an interesting piece on something similar (even though I know she didn’t have time for doing the project in the end):

What does the participio software need to be useful for artistic co-creation?

Hi everyone, Have been following the discussions, super interesting. This is a quick update on the line I am pursuing in contributing to the development work… When it comes to tools for artistic collaboration/co-exploration/co-making I think they may have different requirements than those for e.g software development and or collaboration around “getting things done”. When communication is happening in different channels: touch, smell, sound, movement etc. I have been researching art collectiv…

This could also be interesting for @jakobskote and @jonasjohansson.