Every year, for the last ten years, a significant movement has been brewing in the heart of Silicon Valley. It started, in part, with a spark of imagination from a man named Soren Gordhamer. Around 2006, he was at a low point in his work and personal life, eking out a meager existence from a little trailer in New Mexico. He had been reading a lot, and listening to Eckhart Tolle recordings. He was trying to figure out what he wanted to do next, but Tolle nudged him to ask instead, “What does life want from me?”
One day he took a walk, and was suddenly struck with a big question: as the digital age progressed, would society be wise enough to maintain what is most human about us? He engaged the question by writing a book called Wisdom 2.0, which later turned into a conference. He realized we all love technology, and yet it was making us crazy. He also saw there was a community of people, from within and outside of the tech world, that wanted to live a more mindful and purposeful existence in the digital age.
Now, in its 10th year, many thousands of people from over 30 countries have attended Wisdom 2.0, an annual conference that takes place in San Francisco. This year, I was one of them.
