Futurisms Salon

An online conversation hosted by the Transformative Studies Ph.D. program.

The upcoming Futurisms Salon is a one-hour, experiential online session to explore current theories on tech and our collective flourishing.

AI is swiftly bringing us into a world where anyone with vibe coding can create powerful technologies. In these critical times, can we shift future digital tech into a more fully positive force in our entangled lives? How might we shift towards tech that truly supports a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world? How can we leverage the best theories emerging today on igniting this shift?

Join us for a salon with guest presenter, and long-term Silicon Valley tech creator and expert Sari Harrison, Ph.D. student in the Transformative Studies program, and host Jennifer Wells, Transformative Inquiry faculty. We will explore current theories on tech, including the nexus of transpersonal ways of knowing, charting the polycrisis, and the urgent question of how technology might be shaped in the service of collective flourishing.

Sari will give a presentation on cutting edge theories on tech futures, and then we will have some time for Q&A, to explore and discuss some of the details that go into formulating a doctoral dissertation.

Meet the Speakers

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Jennifer Wells, Transformative Studies Professor, is a scholar of human ecology with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and the Sorbonne. Jennifer is a scholar of systems and complex thinking and how they are applied to envisioning and acting on creative, collective futures. She is a member of the Society of Utopian Studies, studying real utopian places, stories, and projects. She sees complex thought in terms of a web of all the new sciences and humanities today, woven into an emergent worldview. This cutting-edge worldview echoes the world's wisdom traditions of the past and present and opens pathways for new global conversations and collaborations. Jennifer has written over a dozen academic chapters and journal articles, and two scholarly books, including Complexity and Sustainability, Routledge 2014, on how complex thought helps to frame and inspire thinking for synergistic and virtuous circles of transformation to better futures.

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Sari Harrison, Ph.D. candidate in Transformative Studies, has spent 30+ years building technology at Apple, Microsoft, and various start-ups, predominantly in the discipline of product management. Her B.S. is in computer science but after leaving the craziness of the high tech world in 2018 she got her masters in transpersonal psychology at Sofia University. As head of product outcomes for the Center for Humane Technology in 2019, she discovered technology’s values-laden nature and her interest in the philosophy of technology was ignited. She is currently the Chief Product Officer at Retreat Guru and is pursuing her Ph.D. in Transformative Studies at CIIS, focused on how to create posthumanist technology, or technology that moves the world towards posthumanist ethics and ontology.

Related Academic Program

Ph.D. in Transformative Studies