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about telos

Why We Do What We Do at Telos

Why we do what we do | the social Catastrophe
Felix Meritis, Chief Product Designer & CEO
Since the 1950s with the rise of alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food, society has been exposed to a series of new consumer-facing products engineered to exploit our physiology and addict people in the name of record profits. History has proven that businesses like these will stop at nothing to keep the status quo intact as well as expand. As an example of this, look no further than Big Tobacco introducing at one point in time glass particles into their cigarettes to have the nicotine really kick in.

Fast forward to today, technology companies have spent two decades engineering the next frontier: our psychology. Now our relationships, identity, volition, and attention are for the first time in history being commercialised. Only a handful of tech companies monopolised the free and open web against its original promise of decentralisation to become the trillion-dollar enterprises that they are today. These multinationals have become not just advertisement companies but what Shoshana Zuboff terms surveillance capitalists. This new breed of capitalism made capturing human attention and reselling it at all costs the new economic imperative of the 21st Century, causing a tremendous market failure. We are all the poorer for it.

All over the world, materially wealthy societies now find themselves suddenly amid widespread erosion of trusts, polarization, misinformation, and meaninglessness, as individual citizens suffer from continuous partial attention, increased rates of suicidality, drug abuse, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. All the while our next generation has an exorbitant price to pay. The constituent of all human experiences and thus life itself: they pay attention. Each day TikTok alone is commanding 1B hours of attention. That accumulates to 114.000 years each day. At the end of their days, the devastating amount spent by our new generation throughout their lives will equal 12 years and 8 months.

Social media fatigue is through the roof. 40% of students report feeling “too depressed to function.” Another 48% agree or strongly “they are addicted to social media.” +61% report feeling “overwhelming anxiety’. 47% of teens wish there was an easier way to switch off social media. 36% deleted their social media app at least once annually to curb it. 32% of teenage girls in the UK report Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves. There is a +78% increase in ‘serious psychological distress’ episodes by 20-year-olds. There is a +189% increase in 10-14-year-old girls being hospitalized for self-harm, as well a +58% increase in teen suicides ages 14-18. The majority of these figures are growing annually in double-digits and should be viewed as the canary in the coal mine to discern what today's godlike technology is causing. What was termed in 2020 as The Social Dilemma has today escalated into a full-blown Social Catastrophe.
Mission | Why do we exist?
Our mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to a humane technology future.

In pursuit of this goal, we design and develop software functioning as a social framework, far superior to social media in every way, bringing time and energy in harmony with values.
Vision | Who do we want to become?
The leading software innovator in life-long camaraderie communication, as well as a pioneer in the experience and transformation economy through our two-sided platform.
Strategic Objectives | What do we seek to deliver?
The attention economy is the forcing function behind social media’s proliferation of persuasion technology. Hence the reason why billions of people are exposed to extremely sophisticated adversarial technology that undermines relationships, intentions, and well-being. We believe the best way to counteract the attention economy is by offering a viable alternative to social media.
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Consumers are unlikely to switch because of increased privacy or fewer ads. A viable alternative needs to be better in every way — more time efficient, non-regrettable engagement, richer mutual understanding, and far more conducive to a happy telic life. We are not trying to make a better mousetrap and win the race to the bottom of the brainstem; we are committed to building versatile products people rely on daily to enrich life.

That is why today we offering an app designed for non-disruptive messaging and close-friend get-togethers: an offline social network. A community with all the digital tools one needs online to get back to being together offline — free of charge, ads, and addictive distractions.
vocbulary
Telos
/ τέλος /
Supreme end of man's endeavor
Telic
/ˈtɛlɪk/
An action or attitude directed to a definite end
Autotelic
/ˌɔːtə(ʊ)ˈtɛlɪk/
An activity having an end or purpose in itself
Mission

Telos is accelerating the transition toward a responsible technology future through software designed to cultivate people's autotelic hearts and telic minds.

Vision

Accelerate the transition to a humane technology future..

Today we are pioneering an offline social network for our early-community members at MIT.

Tenets
telos values

Friends made along the way

Willie van Burgsteden
Anna Gatti
Kees Kroot
Milo Herder
Merel Staalstra
Sam Licht
Noah Cohen
Marial Leonidakis
Alrik Karssiens
Leo Rennen
Noah Bosch
Tobias Eckardt



By James Williams • Stand Out of Our Light
OUR Advisory Board
Undisclosed

Undisclosed
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Undisclosed
Founder

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right."

— Thomas Paine

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Telos was singlehandedly founded and designed from the ground up by Felix Meritis. Foremost, Felix is a curious autodidact who reads hundreds of books about startups, psychology, design, habits, economics, and much more — curiosity is his compass. The volume and velocity of modern-day life are unprecedented. Although reading for hours nowadays conflicts with most people's agendas, it is exactly this habit that Felix regards as one of the most fulfilling activities of his life.

As Felix understood more about the theories of how individuals thrive and become happier, fulfilled, and more productive, it also became evident that the technologies we use today are not on our team, but somebody else's. Inadvertently they comprise the story of our lives.

Technology that is adversarial is technology that has no place in our life. As Thomas Pain wrote: "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right." Yet, this delusion will always inevitably evaporate. Telos was built on the idea that when people tap into their innate desire to live, love, learn, and leave a legacy, they are capable of incredible things. That people deserve tools that are on their team. Tools that help focus and think, rather than distract and diminish.

"We must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether
by choice or default."


--- William James

Discover what makes us unique.

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