Celebrating a milestone

Thank you for being here!

Dear techno sapiens,

I’m writing to you from my local breakfast place, the crumbs of a banana nut muffin lightly dusting the table, a rising layer of melted ice at the bottom of my cold brew cup. The faint chatter of other patrons accompanies a Beatles soundtrack. My sneaker sticks slightly to the floor (syrup, I assume) as I shift my feet below me.  

I’m staring at my laptop screen and trying to picture all of you.

There are 30,000 of us now! 30,000 people hanging out in this weird and wonderful corner of the Internet.

I’m struck, as always, by the strangeness of this experience, writing online. Me on one side, syrupy shoes afoot, tapping out words on the keyboard. You on the other side, checking your inbox and reading those words.

As our numbers grow, it gets harder to wrap my mind around it. I’m proud, and excited, and intimidated, and a little scared, but mostly, I’m grateful. I feel so lucky to get to do this every week, to connect with you all in this happy little cyberspace.

Harvard Stadium! Capacity: 30,323 people. Kind of fun to imagine us all techno sapiens gathered together there, though I’ll admit, in my 5 years at Harvard I never once saw the stadium this full.

I started Techno Sapiens almost three years ago. I had just had my first child, and, as happens, I found myself questioning a lot of things. 

I started wondering about the ways we share information, and the people who share it. I’d been a research psychologist for over a decade, but the information I was learning was often buried in dry, academic papers. I’d spent hours scrolling through social media parenting advice, but it often felt unrealistic (at best) and lacking scientific evidence (at worst).

I wanted to try something different: to step outside my academic day-to-day, to draw on what I was learning as a parent and person in the (digital) world. To make sense of the research, and to do it in a way that was rigorous but realistic, scientific but (dare I say it?) fun.

I don’t know if I’ve always succeeded in creating this thing I imagined, but what I can say is that I’ve absolutely loved doing it.

Techno Sapiens has grown into something so much bigger than I ever envisioned. It has, quite literally, changed my life. It still blows my mind when I try to picture 30,000 people (and to manage my self-consciousness, I am going to continue trying not to), but I am so, incredibly thankful for every single one of you. 

Thank you for reading. Thank you for your comments, and emails, and suggestions, and encouragement. Thank you for choosing this corner of the Internet.

I’m so glad we’re all here.

See you next week,

Jackie

PS: To learn more about Techno Sapiens, visit our welcome page. You can also find a list of all 200+ prior posts in order of popularity here. Questions? Suggestions? Just want to say hi? Email me anytime at technosapiens.substack@gmail.com (or just reply directly to this email).