At The Tech We Want for Our Brain Commons Online Summit (15 July 2026), researchers, developers, policymakers, journalists, civil society and industry representatives explored how openness can help shape a future in which neurotech is aligned with human rights.
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In the opening session, Renata รvila, CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), welcomes attendees and frames the summit as part of The Tech We Want initiative. She introduces the event as marking OKFN’s first deep foray into neurotechnology, part of the foundation’s newer Frontiers of Openness workstream (alongside other efforts like the SkyCommons Observatory and Critical Knowledge Infrastructures in partnership with Wikimedia Foundation).
She then outlines the two core goals of an โopen neurotech stackโ: keeping “brain commons” open (so people aren’t locked out of generative uses of their own brain data by proprietary restrictions) and making commercial neurotech accountable “from birth,” rather than waiting until the industry is entrenched to react.
She summarises findings from OKFN’s hands-on research โ testing consumer BCI devices, tracing data pipelines, and examining hype-driven marketing narratives (wellness, performance, โbecoming a better youโ) โ noting that brain literacy remains low even among privacy-savvy communities, that devices are inaccessible and culturally/physically exclusionary, but that a promising grassroots creative culture exists among artists, hackers, and students.
She closes by flagging open questions around opt-out rights for workers and the future risk of brain data being used to โprove consent,โ before handing off to Solana Larsen to moderate the first panel.
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The Tech We Want is a collective conversation about new practical ways to build software that is useful, simple, long-lasting and focused on solving people’s real problems.
Since 2023, OKFN has been advocating together with the community of developers working on public-interest technologies for climate-friendly, accessible and sustainable approaches to technology. Understanding the potential ecological and societal impacts of various development decisions is the first step towards another stack with different metrics, community practices and guidelines.
