About

    Hi, I’m John Miedema. I am active on Substack, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. I am @johnmiedema on the Canadian beta, Gander. I use GitHub for my code repository — it hosts my popular tool, Share News on Facebook Canada. You can contact me by email.

    My career as a Solutions Architect spans three decades across the Bank of Canada, IBM Watson Group, and the Internet Archive. My primary areas of interest are neurotech, cognitive accessibility, and user experience design. Neurotech is poised to transform the future by bringing technology into direct relationship with the mind, helping people with disabilities, which ultimately means helping everyone. I am increasingly involved in neurotech research and advising on industry use cases, informed in part by my experience with meditation and Parkinson’s. Other areas of focus include artificial intelligence, digital currency, operational resilience, and web development. I have published on cognitive accessibility and literacy, and hold a patent related to social search technology.

    Neurotech is poised to transform the future by bringing technology into direct relationship with the mind, helping people with disabilities, which ultimately means helping everyone.

    I write contemplative essays and fiction. My deep interests include animism and panpsychism, consciousness and phenomenology, and the sentience of animals, rivers, and rocks. I publish my books independently through Snail Books, where you can subscribe to my newsletter.

    I am a lifelong student of meditation, shaped by vipassana, science, and storytelling. For several years, I facilitated a meditation community at my workplace and am now offering the same practice to the public. My aim is to refine this plain-language approach and publish it as a book. If you would like to join, visit the Meditation Community page and subscribe to the Meditation Community newsletter.

    I am deeply concerned about the state of the climate and politics and believe we have already “hit the iceberg.” My hope is to connect with others who share a farsighted vision — people ready to help guide the next phase with steadiness and care.

    Thanks,
    John