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One of Inc’s 5,000 fastest growing companies, you ought to have your eye on BRINK. Located in both Tucson and D.C., BRINK is a creative group comprised of an agency, a consultancy, a foundation, and a film distribution company. With clients ranging from corporations to causes, their purpose is to elevate their communities and culture.

On the second episode of Impact Everywhere, you’ll hear from Josh Belhumeur, Managing Partner and Creative Director of BRINK. Check out the podcast to hear his full thoughts on binaries, corporate social activism, and storytelling at any of these links:

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In a world that is increasingly controlled by machines — the fight to retain our humanity is becoming more important. The importance of taking a stance is growing in parallel with our need to hold space to hear the opinions of the other side.

Though our use of computers may not change our flesh and blood, it may be impacting our minds. Josh explains that the algorithms used to track our preferences and feed us information are negatively affecting how we view the world. Imagine the binary “1” and “0” as a simple “yes” or “no.” When you click on something, a platform like Facebook will mark you as a “yes” and continue to feed you similar content. When we are constantly exposed to the same things, it can become increasingly more difficult to have meaningful conversations with people of differing opinions. The world is not all 1s and 0s or black and white. There’s a lot of grey in there — but how do we interact with it?

Josh suggests this is not just the responsibility of media and individuals, but also other players like corporations.

“Solving these problems won’t be easy, but we have to start somewhere. We need to get back to the original intent of social media to facilitate human connection, and not simply treat people as data points for shareholders. There’s still plenty of profit to be made and room for advertisers to exist responsibly without the loss of humanity in the process.” Reference

Let’s look at the Edelman Trust Barometer. In 2020, people found businesses to be competent, but not ethical. In fact, none of the below organizations were found to be both competent and ethical. But that doesn’t make them inherently bad. This is the grey of the world.