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