For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the power of a tech sabbath.
Since the early days of the World Wide Web, Tiffany Shlain has been a master at recognizing, celebrating, and expanding the ways that growing global connectivity can allow people to learn and enjoy new things. In 1996, Shlain founded the Webby Awards, considered the Oscars for the Internet, to honor the best of what the Web was beginning to make possible. In the early 2000s, Shlain shifted to filmmaking, making her mark at festivals like Sundance and Tribeca with documentaries and short films.
As a filmmaker, Shlain was drawn to topics similar to those the Webbys celebrate — connectedness and the potential for nascent scientific discoveries and technological advances to make people’s lives better. In 2013, eager to explore new ways to make her films more interactive and impactful, Shlain and Sawyer Steele co-founded Character Day, an annual, worldwide celebration centered on character development. Their idea was to create short films highlighting the latest insights from the science of things like gratitude, empathy, curiosity, and grit, and then to provide a platform for audiences — ranging from elementary, middle, and high school classes to employees at global corporations and families at home — to gather for a day and discuss topics around character development. Character Day’s in-person discussions are augmented with short films, online resources, and a global livecast linking the events together, featuring leading experts like psychologists Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth, and public figures like Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Khan Academy founder Sal Khan.