Into The Flames of Mine

Alectro Lab Collective,Introduction Unit Chapter 02

Hello’s, I am back with chapter two.

I’d like to begin with a huge thank you to my team who agreed to only post my story as the founder for now haha. Anyway, here is the Intro Unit - Chapter Two: Into the Flames of Mine.

The phrase human-centered became really popular with my article, which I am truly grateful for, and I hope we never forget that.

In my third month at TKS, demo day showed up. I was building an electronic sustainable circuit board — which is my secondary focus after STEM & HCS. I think I did a really good job, but more importantly I was really determined to do it.

At that time I was thinking of going into engineering, because other majors looked so “unreachable” or “hard to continue.” But that’s not actually true. You can go from being a literature major to a photography job.Or a technology major to being an creative director.The path is important.Not only what`s written on your diploma.The road afterwards,thats important as the diploma too.

For example, Ali Ogston, my really good mentor and a director at TKS, comes from an art background but now works with tech nerds — and she loves it.(i know she loves it becouse she always there with us us with a really big smile).And she has done much more than that because she truly loves technology.

You just need to love something to get into it. To be whole with it, you really need to move with what you love. It’s normal to get bored sometimes, I’m not talking about that. The real thing is loving it, admiring it, still having a spark when you just look into it.

When I was a child years ago (I’m joking — months ago), I used to look at passionate doctors and friends who were extremely focused on their fields. And I always thought, “They must be faking. You cannot love something that much.Boredom is nature of humanity”

Well… you can. You definitely can.

Just find something you actually enjoy, not just something that looks cool.

Are we really sure you love computer science?
Are you really sure you really like AI?

No. Maybe you like video games and coding. Maybe you enjoy giving prompts and seeing what happens. Maybe you like the creativity of it.

And that’s okay. But don’t say “AI” just because it sounds cool.

Find something you genuinely enjoy. And if you don’t know it yet, act for a little while. Only for a while. Then return to your essence and become the person you want to be.

It’s really important that you do that. With time, you’ll get there.

Now, taking all of this as a quote, I would like to continue with the moment when I got my flame back.

Time passed and we worked on the IKEA business case. It was a great case and the place where I met what will probably be my long time project-building friends,Adham T. and Ivana O. We stayed up past midnight working together, and I started to think: this PM thing might really be who i want to be.

It felt natural to organize things and use technology to build something meaningful. I was the project manager and I was genuinely excited to take that role.

We became the best team in our cohort. Then we continued to the UN challenge, where my flame got even stronger.And we added brilliant Amr I. to our group,a robotics focused aspiring engineer.And we become a good group since then.

We were experimenting and building solutions about cattle movement in South Sudan and how we could analyze it with AI and satellite images. We talked to people, gathered insights and listened how this was a real struggle and a problem in south sudan.

I spent a lot of time talking to people and building timelines. And I actually enjoyed it.

I liked listening to people’s problems and trying to find technological solutions for them. It felt like a safe place for me.

After a month of hard work, my second project manager role in TKS ended with something amazing. Our project became one of the best across multiple cohorts.

And that was the moment I realized something important: human-centered tech was back for me.

Because if we don’t build bridges between humans and technology, we will never reach the world we dream about.

The bridge is the most important thing we have.

In the age of technology, tech people sometimes get lost choosing what is powerful instead of what is useful. And humanities people often hesitate to trust technology because old systems feel safer.

Even though humanities are slowly integrating technology, that process took time. And if something goes wrong with AI, it won’t be easy to reverse that trust.

So what do we actually need?

Something in the middle.

We need people who are in tech but understand humanities, talking to real people in real time. Or people from humanities who deeply understand the role of technology in our age.

This is about the continuous road of our world and how we can live easier - or better - in certain ways.

It’s not just about biotech, computer science or electronics. It’s also about politics and how technology must stay connected to humanity no matter what.

If we lose that connection, we might lose certain ideas we once had about technology. And that could slowly mean losing ourselves.

Thank you for reading Chapter Two.

I don’t think we’ll have a Chapter Three for this Intro Unit in close time… but if you want one, I can definitely continue.I can just put some milestone articles happening in my life,once i continiue from Toronto and TKS era of my life.I know that a lot of adventure is waiting for me,and i am excited to live them.

Right now I’m working on our second unit: Policy of Technology. At the same time my teammate is also exploring cancer research and materials in our Alter Bio Lab.She is a bioengineer from Turkey, Kardelen C.She will generally focus on Biology part of our collective lab so she is the head of biology lab right now.

For now, this is the agenda for Alectro Lab Collective.

See you in the next unit :)

Recommended reading:
Vicious by V. E. Schwab.

Toilers of The Sea by Victor Hugo