Digital Wellbeing: Empowering Connection with Wonder and Imagination in the Age of AI by Caitlin Krause.
Caitlin holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She is the Founder of Mindwise and teaches courses on digital wellbeing, technology, and storytelling at Stanford University. She has also advised Google, LinkedIn, the US State Department on leadership and experience design.
Instead of viewing technology as the typical “necessary evil” to avoid where possible, Caitlin conveys a position that digital tools can be amazing resources for human growth when implemented with positive intention.
Digital Wellbeing presents readers with the innovative notion that technology needs alignment and enrichment. Caitlin shares the idea of a “Digital Wonder” suggesting that in the age of Artificial Intelligence that we all have an opportunity to use technology to expand both inner and outer connections. There is a unique view that we leverage the new advancements in technology to bolsert our humanity.
Embrace new technology to become more human
Rather than focus on the well written insights of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), Caitlin indicates these can and should be be used as “empathy engines” to provide new insights to increase our body awareness and presence. Caitlin is addressing a large portion on the “loneliness epidemic” of technology which obviously just generates “noise” while minimizing real connections.
So Caitlin reveals frameworks including the Presence Pyramid and the Imagination Index which help organizational leaders and educators to evaluate whether digital habits are creating a shared sense of belonging or merely contributing to digital fatigue.
Furthermore, Caitlin seeings the rise of AI not as a threat to humans, but rather as a partner to create new forms of expression. Readers are encouraged to leverage AI to automate manual tasks to free up time for “high-touch” human interactions.
In conclusion, Digital Wellbeing serves as a call to action for identifying and promoting “humane” technology which prioritizes empathy and ethics. Caitlin sees that as our world is rapidly embracing technology advancements, our society will both remain and become more deeply human.