Sean P. Thoennes, PhD
An advocate of new technologies, Dr. Thoennes' blended media and psychology experience grounds theoretical insights that garner respect for speaking engagements covering topics from the cognitive aspects of producing for smart phones and Web videos at BEA 2008 to sharing the stage with Wounded Warriors in 2015 to introduce a concept for augmenting the Vietnam Memorial without changing any physical attributes to leading a symposium on AI, Robotics & Eduction in 2018. He continues to join panels at conventions for APA, AWE, IEEE, National Social Science Association, and others, with a primary focus on the exponential growth of technology and its compatibility with the evolution of society, politics, and the human psyche.
Sean has nearly 30 years of media production experience most of them spent with The Walt Disney Company. He has worked with subsidiaries such as Disney Signature Films, ESPN, ABC, Disney Institute, and many more. His other associations outside the Disney family include Nickelodeon Studios, Department of Defense contractor Statistica, Kennedy Space Center, and many others. After pioneering a desktop video editing business model and overseeing the development of a Studio News program running over a decade within the Disney corporation, Sean found new challenges in the nascent field of Media Psychology. His published doctoral work is foundational in its case study of the first unmediated, uncensored online interaction between members of the Internet community on reddit and a sitting US President in 2012. His conclusions support a new line of inquiry framed around the impact on groups and individuals of new technologies posited as neo-anthropogenic psychology.
Sean is currently penning a book tentatively entitled NEO: Anthropogenic Evolution, Technology and the Human Psyche. He is also an adjunct professor for Fielding Graduate University's Media Psychology Masters program where he is developing curriculum for the psychology of exponential technological change in the areas of AI, Blockchain, life extension, robotics, and whatever is next.
Contact Sean via Twitter @SeanThoennes or via LinkedIn.