Name: Dan Schmidt

Grad Year: 2025

Award: Watson Fellowship

Project: "The Ecology of Social Technology": Digital timelines are accelerating while nature continues in steady cycles. This disconnect shapes how humans relate to themselves, each other, and the world. This project will explore new social technologies that are addressing this disconnect, and working to improve our social fabric. It will show how social technologies—from social media platforms to cocreating music with nightingales, from animal communication systems to government initiatives—can better reflect and respect the natural rhythms that sustain life on Earth.

“When I was deciding to attend CC, a conversation with CC’s 2017 Watson Fellow, Theo Hooker, planted the seed for doing a Watson. Ever since that call, becoming a Watson Fellow has been one of my biggest dreams,” says Schmidt. “The Watson Fellowship feels like the natural next step in a half-my-life-long exploration of how digital and physical worlds weave together. Through traveling to Argentina, Germany, Greece, the UK, and Japan I will make short films about the people, ways of being, and innovative approaches to social technologies I encounter. They will be viewable on my website. This project holds deep significance for me because it unites my studies in computer science, my passion for filmmaking, and my belief in digital technology as a bridge to connection grounded in natural rhythms.”

Schmidt would like to thank Myra Jackson, Cory B. Scott, Roy Jo Sartin, and Re Evitt for all their help during his time at CC and throughout the Watson application process.