Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Lifestyle, Hobbies & Leisure
Weblink
http://happathon.com/book/

HACKING HAPPINESS

John C. Havens

Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World

Happiness? There’s an app for that. In HACKING HAPPINESS, Havens explores the growing trend in online accountability.

The world has undergone a digital renaissance, and there’s no going back. Your “digital influence” has become a business card that allows others to decide if they’d like to hire you, be friends with you, have you over for dinner, or date you… all before they’ve even met the real you. Your smartphone is constantly gathering data about where you go, who you’re going there with, and what you're buying while you're there. The “Internet of things” is growing all around us sending out information about daily habits and routines.

Your data will be out there, for all to see. Google’s Project Glass, will soon project data in a usable and visible way, projecting digiital information right into the world you. Sound like science fiction? The technology is already here.

In HACKING HAPPINESS, Havens explores the growing trend in online accountability. He shows us how we can utilize our technology to improve the human experience and drive social change, how we can use the metrics gathered by our mobile devices about what we're doing and where we’re going to help improve our day-to-day lives, and how sharing more information about ourselves with the world at large will help to connect us with people who need our help (think The Celestine Prophecy, but with technology), making us all better people in the process.

Your data is already being used by savvy marketers to sell you more things, but if applied responsibly and intelligently for our own personal good, we can take back control of our “quantified selves” and use this data as an effective way to improve our well-being.

John C. Havens is a contributing writer for Mashable, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post. He is the Founder of The H(app)athon Project, a non-profit organization, “Connecting Happiness to Action one phone, one heart, and one city at a time” through the use of interactive, sensor-based smartphone surveys. A former EVP for a top-ten global PR firm, he has counseled clients like Gillette, HP, and Merck on emerging and social media issues, and has been quoted on issues relating to technology, business, and well being by USA Today, Fast Company, BBC News, Mashable, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Forbes, INC, PR Week, and Advertising Age. Havens was also a professional actor in New York City for over 15 years, appearing in principal roles on Broadway, television, and film.

Available products
Book Published 2014-03-20 by Tarcher
Book Published 2014-03-20 by Tarcher

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John Havens is leading the charge to change the way we talk and think about digital consumer technology. Rather than simply asking whether the latest gadget is faster or has more features, John encourages us to ask such questions as ‘Will this make me happier?’ And it’s not just a rhetorical ploy; he wants us to think through the question sincerely. John avoids the kneejerk conclusions of both the techno-fanboy and neo-Luddite camps—to the occasional irritation of both—which makes his work all the more important.

John Havens has written a comprehensive guide through our complicated digital lives, carefully examining the benefits of the data-driven pursuit of happiness through the lens of an enlightened idealist. A must-read for anyone interested in a humane future of connectivity.

The book certainly opens up an important conversation about how individuals can, and should, manage their data in an age of rapid advancements in personal technology. Mashable and Guardian contributing writer Havens provides a detailed defense of how developing technologies in augmented reality and wearable devices can increase happiness...An optimistic vision of how new technologies can be reimagined to increase productivity and personal growth.

We all know how much money Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, and other gigantic consumer, search, and social media enterprises make from the personal data we give them for free. Havens argues that not only do we have the right to make money from our personal data but that our data can and should be used to do much more for us than just sell us things. It can make us healthier, both physically and mentally; it can enable and encourage our altruism; it can make our communities more nurturing; and it can promote our happiness. It can help turn us into better, more caring people. Read more...

I’ve met and spoken with literally hundreds of people about aging and the consequences of isolation. Most of them knew the space; many of them understood the emotional impacts, but only John felt it. He intuitively understood how our societal focus on physical health was obscuring our view on emotional health.

This book shows us that happiness can be an active pursuit—a journey filled with data and optimization, with satisfaction as the ultimate goal. Just reading this book made me happier.

In the 20th century, we made great progress in terms of our material wealth, but we’re not really any happier. In this insightful book, John Havens shows us how the new century will bring us opportunities to improve our general well being. Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, he explains how we can use technology to actually improve our lives. It is a truly remarkable work.

In Hacking H(app)iness, I was excited to find a discussion of psychology and technology that extends far beyond a self-improvement guide. Havens weaves together trends related to personal data with futurist scenarios and poignant details from his own life to illustrate how data can help us hold ourselves accountable to others. I recommend this to anyone trying to boost the wellbeing of individuals and communities.

In Hacking H(app)iness, John C. Havens makes the persuasive case that a key to happiness in the digital age is being able to control and leverage your personal data for your own benefit. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the interplay of economics, innovation, and the rising personal data sector, and how you can make better, smarter decisions when you’re in charge of your own data.

The unexamined digital life is walking along an unstable ledge of happiness, in an era of digital exuberance. John C. Havens’s Hacking H(app)iness is the balancing stick that allows us to synthesize and leverage technology by understanding the evolutionary value of one’s digital blueprint, so that well-being and happiness can emerge.

Hacking Happiness covers a whole range of technologies that are all emerging and looks at them from a positive perspective to see how can they help people, our communities, and the world. John’s approach is refreshing and adds new perspectives to consider how we as a society make considerations about what technologies to adopt and how they might fit together for the benefit of the whole.

n Hacking H(app)iness, John C. Havens proves the importance of measuring our lives to identify our purpose versus just increasing profits or productivity. By showing how altruistic actions can increase happiness, Havens also provides a roadmap to scaling (or hacking) how the world perceives value, where currency will be based on compassion versus capitalism.

Hacking H(app)iness is a mind boggling and optimistic vision of how new technologies can be reimagined to increase productivity and personal growth—and you don't have to be a geek to like it.

More than any time in human history, we have access to mountains of data about ourselves. Hacking H(app)iness is the first book to show us how to leverage this information as a path to happiness, rather than a source of misery.