You gotta go for what you know. Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be.
There was a peculiar atmosphere at a recent technology conference in Silicon Valley. The glow of laptops was mostly absent and few gazed distractedly at their smartphones. Instead the audience was rapt, entirely focused on the speakers on stage.
“This is the best audience ever,” said Chris Sacca, an early investor at Twitter and a regular at tech conferences. “You’re actually listening to me.”
This was the first Wisdom 2.0 summit, which convened a few hundred spiritually minded technologists – everyone from Buddhist nuns to yogic computer scientists – for two days of panels and presentations on consciousness and computers. The goal: to share tips on how to stay sane amid the tweets, blips, drops and pings of modern life. (…)
“The problem with the kind of jobs we have is that there is no knob to dial down,” said Gopi Kallayil, an Indian-born marketing manager for Google who studied yoga at an ashram when he was younger. He spoke for many of the participants who professed a deep frustration with their inability to find serenity in an increasingly wired modern world. (…)
It seemed that almost everyone believed that our constant web surfing, no matter how noble its intent, is not conducive to the spiritual life. “As much as we’re connected, it seems like we’re very disconnected,” said Soren Gordhamer, the conference organiser. “These technologies are awesome, but what does it mean to use them consciously?”
One obvious way to bridge the techno-spiritual chasm is to make the cubicle a bit more like a temple. This, however, involves more than burning a stick of incense in the office. Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” programme encourages its employees to embark on a spiritual path. Twitter’s conservatively dressed chief technology officer, Greg Pass, said he teaches a form of Tai Chi in the company’s office.
photo { Henri Cartier-Bresson | image #16 in the slideshow }
