WHAT IS REAL?
OUR MISSION
The nature of being human in the context of an increasingly technological ecology is one of the most important inquiries of our time. How do we build systems that make us more, not less, human? How can we use technology to accelerate meaning in our real lives? How do we put AI at the service of the creative leader, artisans, the editor or the auteur? REAL has been asking these hard questions for almost 20 years. Our mission is to change the nature of the systems that nudge, automate and increasingly control our lives — one project at a time.
WHY MEANING? WHY REAL?
REAL has illuminated a path for us to align our most soulful longings with our economic and cultural decisions – and she has done it in a way that can be accepted by our institutions now desperately seeking transformation.
— Lynne Twist, Global activist, Fundraiser, Speaker, Consultant, and best selling Author of The Soul of Money
The future of humanity hinges on understanding and harnessing the unlimited potentials of meaning seeking and meaning making.
— Paul Wong, 2012
Renee Bunnell has identified the scientific underpinnings of what we are really hungry for, and what causes us to consume both as individuals and societies. She beautifully proves that we are longing for something that could be satisfied more fully if we understood the unique nature of who we are.
— Geneen Roth, #1 New York Times best selling Author of Women, Food and God.
[M]eaning is . . . like a large map or web, gradually filled by the cooperatives works of countless generations . . . an individual‘s meaningfulness may be a personally relevant section of that culturally created and culturally transmitted map.
— Roy Baumeister, 2013
REAL’s spaces of meaning metric will provide a common ground for marketers, psychologists and economists who are working to develop flourishing brands and economies that serve the people within them.
— Mark Anielski, Economist and Author, The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth, Co-author of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).
What we are seeing is more of a passing of the torch, from human (information) gatekeepers, to algorithmic ones. And the thing is, that the algorithms don‘t‘ yet have the kind of embedded ethics that human editors did.
— Eli Pariser, 2011
Dr. Bunnell’s studies into sustainable well-being takes individual and personal behaviors as the fundamental building block of a more rational macro-economic construct. She joins a growing body of progressive thinkers examining new approaches to interpreting our societal present and charting our future.
— Hugo Barreca, MBA, JD, Author of Financial and Legal Consultant and Author.
[T]he gene regulatory architecture of the human immune system may be more sensitive to the eudaimonic vs. hedonic sources of human happiness than are our conscious experiences.
— Barbara Fredrickson, 2013
PEOPLE
Renée Bunnell, Phd – Executive Director
Renée is the managing partner of Real.org and developer of REAL: Digital Character’s patented technologies for media and audience streaming ecosystems. As part of her vision, she sees digital analytics evolving to become more humanistic. She is on the board for the IEEE Ethically Aligned Design committee for Embedding Values into Autonomous Intelligent Systems; the cofounder of the legislative nonprofit Network for Investor Action and Protection (NIAP); an advisor to Aspen Institute’s Art, Spirituality and Science conferences. Renée is also the principle investigator for the nonprofit Project for Sustainable Well-being, which developed a multidisciplinary metric for research collaboration between businesses, economists and psychologists. She previously worked as a business development executive for several Silicon Valley and Washington, DC pattern recognition technology startups.
REAL.ORG PARTNERS, ADVISORS AND COLLABORATORS
The following is just a partial list of many individuals producing or advising on REAL’s projects above:
Paul Lupi, Mayank Agarwal MBA, Mark Anielski, Hugo Barreca JD MBA, Kimberly Carroll, Alan Davis, Owen Flanagan PhD, Nikolay Geht, Jane Goodall, Stanislav Grof PhD, Jean Houston PhD, Suzanne Johnson, Howard Kahn PhD, Leo Lubow JD, Gifford Pinchot, Libba Pinchot, Geneen Roth, Nicole Schmidt, Robert L. Schwartz (in memoriam), Joe Toth, Lynne Twist, Kathryn Williams PhD, Mohammad Yunus PhD, Daniel Zubrik, (more…)
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