Dresden, a city rich in history and culture, became a very special home for me for two years between 2019 and 2021, and forever holds a special place in my heart. It’s a place that I, as an American, felt both privileged and challenged to navigate. Prior to my arrival, Dresden was familiar to me […]
Read more "Deutschland verlassen (Leaving Germany)"When I share my vision for the future of technology, I often encounter warnings—concerns rooted in a belief that humans are more capable of corruption than love. But I disagree. I believe we are shifting away from outdated systems of power and mistrust toward a world grounded in community care, personal and social flourishing, and […]
Read more "The Future of Technology and Compassion: A Vision of Hope"“More than half of all women experience sexual assault at some point in their lives.” I state boldly, knowing this is a jumbled statistic. In my slightly tipsy state, I am actually misquoting a statistic from UN Women which states that globally 1 in 3 women report being victims of intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual […]
Read more "We Need to Talk About Consent."When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, his vision was a digital space where the entirety of human knowledge could be connected through a central hub, allowing users to access information through interconnected “links.” Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites today, serves as a key realization of that vision, offering a vast collection […]
Read more "The Evolution of Connection: Reimagining Technology for Shared Experience"The Shannon-Weaver model of communication stipulates that face-to-face interaction is the most immersive and information-rich mode of communication. Currently, many emerging communications technologies seem to be fixated on approximating a verisimilitude of face-to-face communication. In my view, emulating face-to-face communication should not be the gold standard and benchmark for any new media technology. Why attempt […]
Read more "Rethinking Communication: A Vision for Augmented Social Cognition"I implore you to consider this question: Does sadness always have to be heavy and burdensome? It is easy for me to be effervescent, joyful, and rapturously excited about beauty, possibilities, and ideas. I’m apt to be excited. And yet, I am not this way all the time. I can’t be. Or at least, the […]
Read more "Easeful Depth: Exploring Sadness as an Asset to Our Emotional Landscape"There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Read more "Protected: Ana Wrecks Your Life"The feeling starts when I lay on my back. I love lying on my back and looking up. Instantly, this centers me. It makes me feel calm, and wise. It has always been this way. It grounds me. Lately, something peculiar has started to happen, and I do not know why. I often have this […]
Read more "Embodying Relaxation: The Feeling of Falling and Growing Roots"Emily Dickinson was perplexed by this notion that access to truth has two dimensions, which she referred to as circumscription and circuitry. Circumscription refers to the outer reaches of what we as humans can possibly understand about the cosmos, the universe, and ultimate truth. The circuit refers to our individual existence, and the scope of […]
Read more "Compassion as a practice of shifting focus from self on other"One of the main limitations of empathy is that it triggers a deep and intense emotional response to another person or persons. Specifically, because of the emotional toll of empathy, individuals typically empathize more readily with those who are geographically or relationally close, making it challenging to extend this capacity to others. Paul Bloom argues […]
Read more "The Realization that Everyone Else Also Has a Rich and Intricate Subjective Life"
What is Experience? 