What if we have it all wrong?

My lab and I are working on several projects that either center or integrate joy as an intervention, strategy, or framework. We are trying to think about joy in places where it is not optimized or even considered, like in the design of AI models, community safety tools, or emerging technology that shapes our everyday lives.

If I am honest, it sometimes feels like a stretch. Why would joy be part of developing AI models? But that very questioning is part of the problem.
My brain has been conditioned to believe that rigor, innovation, and technology must be absent of joy. That true innovation is complicated, hard, deficit‑based, focused only on solving problems. That’s exactly why Emily Falk’s recent New York Times op‑ed resonated with me. She described how our brains get stuck in negativity through doom‑scrolling habits and confirmed that this conditioning reinforces the belief that life and work must be hard or grim before they can be meaningful.

But what if we were wrong? What if joy, happiness, connectedness, liberation, and freedom were integral to how we build technology? What if technology should not be built if joy is not involved? A recent UCSF Berkeley study showed that just five to ten minutes of deliberate micro acts of joy each day measurably improved emotional well‑being, reduced stress, and increased a sense of control, especially for those facing financial or social challenges.

And what if the same idea applied to our everyday lives? What if we woke up every single day and chose joy, insisted on joy, demanded joy, not for other people, but for ourselves?

And then, what if we could do both?