A Humanist Technologist
In a blog post called ‘Humanist Technologist’ by John Maeda, director of MIT, he mentioned calling himself as a Humanist technologist back in 2006 and explained his understanding of ‘Technologist’ and the following definition :
“The default motto of the technologist is that more technology is better.”
“Technologists create progress. Progress is about things happening. We wouldn’t want a world where nothing happened at all.”
He then explained the difference between the two terms
Technologist = I do, because I can.
Humanist = I do, because I care.
“With just the switch of one letter for two (n to re) — “can” to “care” — technology can become humanized….I hope that care prevails over can for the next few years while we weather the utter complexity of the systems that surround us.”
— John Maeda
From the article, I am interested in the term and googled what it means for people nowadays. This image on the left summed up simply, that The Machinist only focuses on progress, while The Humanist focuses on helping people and embrace the error in the process.
This concept aligns with another picture I found, which is a Digital Humanist Mafinesto. It includes Putting people at the center, Embracing Unpredictability, and Respect Privacy in an entire product lifecycle.
Also, love this aspect from one twitter user in reply to Maeda’s thought, that in the future, a Post-Humanist Technologist will be : I do because I am.
From Fire One One Lab’s perspective, The definition of a Humanist Technologist very much align with our purpose driving change in the innovation sector. We always begin with setting the right mindset and try our best to understand the people — From the CEOs, clients, their customers, to users and stakeholders. We care about putting positive change in our client’s organisational culture and it always start with our genuine curiosity about their heads, hearts and wellbeing.
To illustrate this concept, Intuit’s new advertising video is a great example because it’s all about empathy for human and not just fancy jumbo machine taking over the world. And I’m sure it will make some of you shiver and feel truly emotional. :)
