Enlightenment engineering--tech as catalyst for inner & outer peace: Mikey Siegel at TEDxSantaCruz

After working at NASA and MIT, Consciousness Technologist Mikey Siegel began to ponder another use for technology: facilitating extraordinary states of wellbeing by helping to reduce stress and increase joy. So how DO we "hack" consciousness? He has some thoughts about that.

This TEDxSantaCruz talk is one of 22 surrounding our theme of "Activate" at the third full-day TEDxSantaCruz event held March 8, 2014 at the Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz, CA. http://www.tedxsantacruz.org/

Mikey has worked to advance human-robot interaction at NASA, MIT, Audi, and other leading institutions. Robotics work continued in a professional context until a change in life priorities pointed towards technology's potential to reduce stress and increase joy by shifting people's relationship to themselves. Recently in Hong Kong he acted as director of consciousness engineering at the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness where he focused on technology's role in facilitating extraordinary states of wellbeing. Presently, Mikey is involved in a number of ventures including founding a company called BioFluent Technologies which creates tools designed to point us toward the joy of simply being alive, here and now. He is also actively promoting the idea of Consciousness Hacking which, in the spirit of the Maker Movement, encourages people to build new tools for exploring and altering the way we think, feel and live. More»

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)