Thanks to all particpants, media and friends who helped make this last workshop an excellent event.  You can find out more info and connect with other participants at the Humanity 2.0 social site.  You can also see more pictures of the event over on flickr.  

Let us know if you're interested in hosting a "soul tech" like event (perhaps "sustainable tech" would be a better name, finding out some thought this was a religious event!) in your area or for your organization.  

Here's the video clip from the recent Today Show story about our workshop:

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Soul Tech: Living a passionately productive life amidst a tech-stressed world

5 Spaces Left!
Recently featured in the Seattle Times, & LA Times
Workshop price is now by donation!  See details below...

Technology can be fun and effective, and yet it can also be stressful, addictive and even soul-deadening.  The key is to use it in a way that actually serves our broader work and life goals.  What does that look like?

During a recent Spark Northwest Humanity 2.0 workshop on balancing technology with our deeper needs of human fulfillment, participants identified several major challenges, including:

• How do we deepen awareness of when we are too consumed by technology?

• When we become aware, how do we consciously choose new behavior that deepens our happiness and connection with others?

• As we work to establish a balance between technical and soulful aspects of living, how do we stick with it?

The Soul Tech workshop will address these challenges.  Using a fun and inspiring group process, you will develop a clear understanding of where you are at and where you want to go with technology, from a soulful living perspective, and you will layout a concrete plan for getting there.

We'll use a mix of facilitation, games and activities that are at once fun, insightful and respectful.  You will end up with specific ways to bring balance and happiness to what can be a fast-paced technologically absorbing world.  

Location

Seattle, WA. Capitol Hill, Velocity Studio.
View Google Map

Time and Date

1:30p to 6:00p on Saturday, January 26th, 2008.

Call to reserve your place.

How do I register?

Registration is limited, so call soon.  The workshop price has changed to a donation model -pay what it was worth to you, no one will be turned away unless max enrollment is met.  To register and secure your space, or for more information, call 1-877-I-AM-GAME.

We look forward to meeting you and giving you one of the most memorable days of your year!

Random Related Resources:

• Connect with other people & resources at the Spark H2.0 Social Site
• Be sure to read the excellent writings of Steve Talbott over at "NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility"
• Nancy White's blog "Full Circle" is an excellent blog about the newest high tech tools for connecting and sharing information, while keeping the heart of human face-to-face interaction a priority.
• "Internet Addiction" Test
• "Internet Addiction Disorder" at Wikipedia
• 
• Jon Husband's 'concept and site Wirearchy' is thought-provoking:
• "Wirearchy: a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology"
• BBC Article on the rise of internet addiction
• Leif's paper exploring the nature of technology through the magic within Tolkien's myth
• Paper describing Leif's crazy thesis project, involving a meeting of men and elves and a company Quest like a 'real life adventure game'.

• "The great cultural debate that loomed at the end of the twentieth century and promised to dominate the twenty-first, then, was one between the realists who believed that a clear eyed appreciation of the human condition was necessary to be human, and the postrealists who believed that glossing reality and even transforming it into a movie were perfectly acceptable strategies if these made us happier –a debate, one might say, between humanness and happiness.  In a sense, the controversy over Prozac and other antidepressants –was a happiness induced by pharmacology better than a less euphoric state that was natural or real? –was an early skirmish in the war, and a template for it…Is reality, as it was traditionally construed, morally, aesthetically and epistemologically preferable to postreality? Or: Is life, as traditionally construed, preferable to the movie version of life?
              There were and are no simple answers, only vitally important issues with the most profound implications.  To the realists, this shadow life so many were opting for edged us closer to Philip Roth’s dark, prophetic vision of a world where entertainment was the purpose of existence and everything else would either conform or cease to matter.  To the postrealists, a life in which entertainment was the governing cosmology and all of existence an endless movie edged us closer to the possibility that we need never suffer life’s hurts again.  Either we stood on a precipice or we stood in a bright new dawn.  Which would it be, the end of traditional human values or the beginning of a brave new world, would be the question of the epoch."

  -Neil Gabler "Life the Movie", pp.242-243

• You've very likely seen this "Bad at the Office" video already, but if not make sure you check it out. Besides being hilarious, the fact thats it has had millions of views highlights the reality that the subject matter is hitting home with quite a few people...

 

A Spark Northwest & 8020Vision Experience