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Camille Carlton and Maria Bridge co-create The Catalyst, a newsletter that explores topics at the intersection of technology, human behavior, ethics, and systems reform. We draw on information and inspiration from the field, our readers, and the CHT team and are delighted to bring you a synthesized view of CHT’s latest take on a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
We believe in a future where technology operates on a human level. And in that spirit, we wanted to introduce ourselves, the humans creating The Catalyst newsletter with a brief Q&A:
In your opinion, what does a healthy relationship with technology look like?
Maria: For me, it’s much more what it feels like. When using technology feels restorative, connecting, energizing, and humane, it’s healthy and additive to my life.
When it feels draining, depleting, anxiety creating, or even just numbing — those are signals for me to step back and make adjustments.
Camille: I guess for me, I think about technology that is healthy for us on a collective level. When technology enables genuine connection, fosters strong community, helps us problem solve, and when it increases our quality of life – across the board not just for a few – that’s the type of technology we want.
In your opinion, what needs to happen in order to improve the ways we currently approach technology?
Maria: We need education, new expectations, and shared language. We need as many people as possible to understand that technology is not neutral — and then we need to develop the capacity of those working in technology to develop tech with empathy, care, and wisdom. And we need everyone to demand new business models and operating paradigms for technology that nurtures more humane technology.
The need for education and new language is why Camille and I are pouring so much energy into The Catalyst — so that we can create an educational newsletter for busy people looking to influence the humane tech ecosystem.
Camille: As Maria said, we absolutely need education. We need people to understand that technology is influenced by and influences society. We need people to understand the incentive structures that drive technology development and deployment, particularly in the private sector. And we need people to understand the options we have to change these incentive structures. To me, education is the mechanism that will enable us to shift power towards the collective and demand new business models and operating paradigms.
With that said, I also think we need a radical reckoning of how technology continues to have disproportionate and detrimental effects on marginalized communities, systemically scaling and embedding some of the worst aspects of our society from racism to inequality. If we want technology to enable our shared humanity, its design, development, and deployment needs to be shared.
What has been your journey into the humane technology movement?
Camille: I spent several years leading marketing at fintech and healthtech firms, not questioning the implications of my work from tracking time on web pages, to running targeted advertising, to scraping emails. My wake-up call came when I learned about Cambridge Analytica. Never had I considered the large-scale implications of the tactics I participated in, much less seen how technology could undermine democracies across the globe. From there, I went on to pursue a master’s in development, with a focus on technology and society, and transitioned careers.
Maria: Meditation was the catalyst for me. I started meditating in 2013 out of a desperate desire to address growing mental anxiety. As my practice matured, and especially as I started doing longer silent retreats in 2017, meditation illuminated the operating system of my mind. I began to understand how sensitive our minds are and how much our sensory input actually changes our mental operating system.
When I understood this more fully, it honestly freaked me out how much influence technology has over our thoughts, perceptions, and actions at imperceivable levels — by way of its content, algorithms, apps, devices, and operating models.
That got me inspired to make a career switch and do whatever I could to raise awareness of these mechanisms while also making technology more ethical.
How would you describe your own relationship with technology?
Camille: Oof. Is techno-cynic a word? As I mentioned, when I first started working at tech start-ups I was very much a techno-optimist, purely from my own naïveté. After that bubble burst – and I’m quite grateful it did – I found myself questioning the unintended consequences of every product or application of technology to the point where I even discredited important benefits.
I’m striving to have balance and to embrace nuance. More recently I’ve been using Donella Meadows’ perspective on growth – For whom? At what cost? What is the real need here, and what is the most direct and efficient way for those who have that need to satisfy it? How much is enough? What are the obligations to share? – to help shape how I perceive and interact with different technologies.
Maria: Evolving. I went through a period of very low tech usage — not consuming the news, avoiding all social media, often going stretches without my phone.
But eventually, I felt a desire to re-engage with the world through technology — in order to help course-correct its harms. So I’ve been back on social media selectively, primarily for CHT, and follow the news much more.
It’s a balancing act because I directly perceive how interacting with social media, email, slack, even just being on google shortens and speeds up my attention span. But right now it’s important to me to engage thoughtfully, as best I can.
What makes YOU optimistic that we, as a society, can build a tech future aligned with our human values?
Camille: There is incredible movement across the ecosystem where people are recognizing that our existing operating paradigm just isn’t sustainable. I see researchers, community organizers, and experts at the forefront of critical changes – from platform tweaks to government policy. I see global leaders and everyday individuals with increased desire to understand and shape how technology exists within our lives. And of course, I see technologists themselves aching to build products that align with shared values. Through all of this, I think power is shifting and change is coming.
Maria: I believe in the power of operating in alignment with our own values — in ways big and small — to have marvelous, unforeseeable, positive ripple effects.
If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for taking the time to get to know us. We also wanted to give a special thank you to All Tech Is Human, for providing these thoughtful questions as part of their HX Report Aligning Our Tech Future With Our Human Experience .
