Welcome to the Soul Dividend

Um, so what is a "Soul Dividend"?

Deep breath, here we go!

Technology affects us every day. It affects our jobs, our businesses, our relationships, and our understanding of the world around us. I read a lot about how AI is going to transform our workplaces, or how social media dramatically increases anxiety and depression in young people. Every day, there are new analyses of technology-driven economic impacts, company valuations, and geopolitical competition.

But there is almost nothing that gives an individual any insight into how technology will affect them, as an individual, or what they could or should do about it. Not how tech affects their job or their bank account - but how it affects them on a human level - how they experience the world and develop their individual identity.

I came up with the term soul dividend to describe the natural endowment each of us has as thinking, feeling humans. It is the value we generate from our attention to the world, our emotional depth, and our cognitive ability. Just as a corporation issues a dividend (money) to its shareholders as a result of its prosperity, our inner unique humanness - our “soul” if you’ll allow an atheist to use the term - generates a dividend. You have a soul dividend.

Deciding what we do with this dividend is critical to our happiness, and something we spend far too little time considering. It determines who we are, how much we realize our potential, and how fulfilled we feel in our brief time on this planet. It is central to questions like “what am I even doing with my life?” and “when I’m on my deathbed, will I have regrets?” Think of it as the ineffable thing that separates us from any other creature, machine, or AI.

The soul dividend is also what we give away by trading the difficult, fraught, but life-affirming connection to each other and to ourselves for easy validation, superficial connection, and infinite-scroll stimulation. Much of 21st century technology is designed to replace your soul dividend with something else that creates value for someone else.

Make sense?

So I’m starting this Substack, The Soul Dividend (TSD), to create a place for critical commentary about the latest technology developments through the lens of its impact on our inner lives. Having participated in many discussions about advanced technology with executives, journalists, and political leaders, I can tell you the tools at our disposal for coping with new technology fall woefully short of what is needed. The writings here at TSD will go beyond economic and business discussions to provide practical steps for how we can control technology and protect our soul dividends.

The TSD also seeks to cut through bullshit and corpo-speak that all too often surrounds technology discussions, so that we can talk about things like normal humans again.

A bit about me: I’ve spent time in the halls of power in Washington, DC and as part of ambitious, close-knit leadership teams pursuing disruptive technology in San Francisco. I’ve lived as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine and traveled the world to try to understand my place in it. I’ve been an advocate, strategist, and culture carrier for technology and its ability to improve our lives. But I’ve also seen how neglecting a full accounting of the impacts of technology have - how do I say this delicately - broken the world in very serious ways.

The disruption from artificial intelligence is creating a generational imperative to revisit essential questions about who we are, why we are here, and what we mean to each other. The answers to these questions can illuminate a new way forward, one in which we benefit from technology without giving away the most important parts of ourselves. One in which we act decisively to nurture and invest in our uniqueness.

I really believe that living fulfilled, meaningful lives in the 21st century demands that we value and protect our soul dividends. Let’s find out how together.