The story
Technology in service of the inner life
Consciousness Hacking began in December 2013 with a simple intention: to spark a community of makers exploring and building technologies for human flourishing. The first gatherings were small meetups in Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Within a few years, the San Francisco community had become one of the largest regularly gathering communities in the Bay Area, and chapters had formed in more than 40 cities around the world.
The idea at its heart was a little radical. Modern technology, guided by science and by the world's contemplative traditions, holds an enormous and largely unrealized potential to support psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Not technology that captures our attention, but technology that helps us find peace, compassion and connection, and makes the deepest parts of human experience accessible across cultural, religious and geographic boundaries.
For seven years the community gathered for talks, demos and experiments. Neuroscientists shared the stage with Zen priests, engineers with psychotherapists, artists with investors. There were hackathons and project nights, a film festival, sold-out parties, and two Awakened Futures summits on the meeting of psychedelics, technology and meditation.
Today Consciousness Hacking no longer hosts central events, but it continues as a global community and culture: in the people and projects it brought together, in chapters that still gather, and in a library of more than 150 recorded talks whose questions are only becoming more urgent. If you want to hear when the community gathers again, leave your email above.
