Joy To The World

Get enough people happy and we can change the world, technologist and author Mo Gawdat tells Hong Xinyi.

- Hong Xinyi

AN ENGINEER BY TRAINING, Egypt-born Mo Gawdat has worked for IBM, Microsoft and, most recently, Google X, where he was the chief business officer for the Silicon Valley giant’s legendary innovation arm. He also authored the 2017 book, Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy, in which he shares his insights on how to be happy. So he seems like the best person to answer this burning question: can technology really bring us happiness?

It is a pressing concern these days, as the world grapples with social media tribalism, data privacy breaches, and myriad other technology-enabled quagmires. Mo’s take on the matter stresses the importance of self-responsibility. “Nothing outside you creates happiness,” he tells us on the sidelines of the Credit Suisse Global Mega trends Conference in April, where he was keynote speaker. “So the expectation that technology will make us happy is not true. Having said that, it shouldn’t be making us unhappy.”