Mission
& Vision
Our mission is to support community, self-exploration, and a healthier connection with technology and the wild.
Earthrise: NASA
Vision and Origin Story
On a Pale Blue Dot
Earth is visible as a single pale blue dot, barely one pixel in width, about two thirds of the way up the photograph, seemingly suspended in a sunbeam.
We envision a future in which technology is used intentionally to support human flourishing. And we believe that to get there, we sometimes need to take a step back and experience a less distracted way of life. We believe that a personal connection to the wild is essential to our collective wellbeing. And that to thrive we need to live active, purposeful lives in community with others — while still getting enough of the freedom, solitude, and silence essential for deep thought and creativity.
The Lifted Origin Story
A letter From the Founder
Christmas Eve 1968. Ensconced aboard Apollo 8, the first crewed spacecraft to orbit the Moon, astronaut William Anders snapped a photo of Earth rising above the lifeless lunar surface. Later that evening, during a live broadcast, his fellow astronaut, Jim Lovell, said: ‘The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realise just what you have back here on Earth.’
Valentine’s Day 1990. Voyager 1, a space probe launched thirteen years earlier to study the outer solar system, took a photo of Earth from a distance of around 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometres). Earth is barely visible: a ‘pale blue dot’ amid bands of sunlight reflected by the camera.
The image inspired the scientist, Carl Sagan, who was part of the Voyager 1 team, to write: ‘Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives . . . on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’
These images have long been a source of inspiration to me. In them, we see a vision of all of us as one: voyagers aboard a fragile planet, reeling through the immensities of space. It is a view of things hard to hold on to on the ground — but one we urgently need. Perhaps now more than ever, as upheavals in our technological and geopolitical landscape converge with crises in our biosphere.
However, as I discovered to my astonishment in Dartmoor, when I trespassed upon an ancient tree, you don’t need to be looking at Earth from space to feel awed by the natural world, and connected to something larger than yourself. Indeed, as I later learned, you don’t even need to go to Dartmoor.
The experience of being awestruck led me to the work of professor Dacher Keltner, the world’s leading authority on awe. I read (and confirmed for myself on walks in London’s majestic parks) that awe and its associated benefits are accessible in a variety of everyday environments — and particularly outdoors in nature.
So, Lifted sprang from an encounter with a tree.
That’s certainly part of it.
Lifted also sprang from a feeling of deep unease about our rapidly evolving relationship with technology. Apollo 8, Voyager 1, the camera held by William Anders, and more recently the James Webb Space Telescope, are all technological marvels that add wonder to my life.
But the world is becoming more distracting, anxiety is on the rise, and the technology used to hook our attention is getting ever harder to resist. This is not the relationship with technology I had hoped would shape our daily experience of the world.
Human attention has become a commodity. And this commodification of attention threatens to separate us from each other, from nature, and from the everyday wonder essential to human well-being.
As someone who has spent years meditating, I know that learning to focus your attention, choosing where and how to place it, is the foundation of mindfulness. The quality of your conscious attention at any given moment is your experience of the world. So it’s no small thing to be hooked on products designed to harvest as much of your attention as possible, so it can be sold on to advertisers, or otherwise monetised.
Addressing these concerns seems particularly important given the accelerating roll-out of AI.
Silent awe walks, enjoyed with digital devices stowed away, seems, therefore, like a good place to start the Lifted journey.
I hope you join us.
Sam Alexandroni, Founder of Lifted
