Echo chambers and bubbles. Fake news and trolls. The peculiar, depression-inducing atomization of society wrecked by on-demand convenience, smartphone addiction, and social media vanity.

It didn’t have to be this way. The internet was supposed to provide space for boundary-smashing communication between farflung and diverse people with something to share. Meaningful human interaction--exchange of knowledge, mutual care and support--would happen in novel mediated forms, but remain at the heart of the World Wide Web.

These values are reasserting themselves powerfully in this era of tech-skepticism and backlash. Yet they’ve always been the motivating force for pockets of startups and established tech companies, whose insights and methods are attracting growing attention and excitement. 
Household names like AirBnB are expanding from purely transactional room rental to Experiences that involve learning and exploring. Long-standing stalwarts like meetup.com are getting new infusions of cash and interest.

Smaller players (organizing-oriented text message service Hustle, online coaching and advising startups TalkSpace and BetterUp) are using a variety of approaches and platforms. They share one key element: their focus is not on what the tech does, how the user interface encourages longer sessions or rapid user growth--but on how they can better facilitate goals-oriented interaction between people.

Ian Temple, founder and CEO of the music mentoring platform Soundfly, built his educational, creativity-boosting startup on this very principle. “Passive learning has its place, but music is one of those skills that demands real active input from both instructor and student,” notes Temple, himself an accomplished touring musician. “We designed our approach to be more about that unique human connection, and how that can help people learn. That’s why we give our learners a dedicated mentor, a person responding to them and their needs. This happens via technology, but the real work happens between people.”

Tech opens up these sessions to more people, to folks who might struggle to fit music lessons into their everyday lives (or find a relevant instructor at all in their area). It allows skilled musicians facing unpredictable and intense schedules to manage students in a new asynchronous and tailored way. When the two meet--a highly motivated but remote student, a gifted but busy teacher--the results can be astounding for both parties.

The human relationship boosts discipline and stokes motivation, in ways that no video roll or set of spreadsheets can. As German indie artist and Soundfly student Kasseopeia noted, “By giving me the right tasks my mentor helped me to come up with ideas to create the perfect values and tones for my musical story. Though the program is over, my mentor still feels like my accountability-partner which gives me an ongoing, encouraging drive.”

Pursuing challenges and making personal leaps allow demand a human presence. It’s hard to venture into uncharted places alone. “For four weeks, my mentor really pushed me, making me look at things at a different perspective. She shared her experience not only in music industry but also throwing ideas about time management when I was struggling getting things done in time,” recounts Innessa Singer, who worked with a Soundfly mentor to hone her music business model.

Technology enables but doesn’t define the shape of the relationship. “We’ve always been agnostic when it comes to how our students and mentors interact,” says Temple. “We have specific expectations for response times and assignment structures, say, but allow people to decide what apps or platforms work to best cultivate a meaningful relationship for them. .”

“We need to move away from this idea of tech simply as making life more convenient,” reflects Temple. “Convenience doesn’t necessarily contribute meaning to our lives. Supportive human connection, learning from each other, challenging each other to be better versions of ourselves — that’s what tech can do at its best.”

When Beloit, WI, teacher Lisa Reshkus’ school got tablets for every teacher and student, the music instructor had no idea that her life was about to change.

“The tablets came with music software for the kids, and I wanted to know how to use it so that I could teach them how to use it,” Reshkus recalls. She took an online course in digital production. Then she took another. Soon, she was making her own beats and tracks, thanks to guidance from online music coaching platform Soundfly and its mentors.

Reshkus had a strong foundation in music. Classically trained, she remembers, “I’ve always been interested in music. I begged my mom for a piano. She finally broke down and bought me one, along with years of piano lessons. I got a degree from a local college, and I’ve been teaching ever since.”

She leads several choirs and teaches music to fourth through eighth graders, a career she’s enjoyed for two decades. Yet something unexpected clicked as she mastered the music generating capabilities of her tablet. “I’d played with GarageBand, but there was something about the sounds this software had, the chord progressions and other possibilities.” Reshkus was hooked. She had craved more creative work in her life.

Through a teacher at one of her first online courses, she found Soundfly, and began learning everything she could. The price and ease of the distance-learning model appealed to her, as did the quality of instruction and work her instructors were making. “I feel so inspired by their work. I enjoy what they do. It’s outside the box,” Reshkus says. “I don’t like listening to too much pop, because frankly I find it a bit dull. The mentors at Soundfly go beyond basic commercial stuff.”

So does Reshkus. Her work reflects her lifelong love of classical music, even as she crafts electronic tracks. She had experimented in the past with how classical and, say, punk or indie rock could mesh, thanks to jam sessions with friends’ bands, when she sometimes whipped out a mean solo based on pieces like Pachelbel’s Canon in D. This impulse remains. “You can hear the classical influence in the way I create, especially the piano piece,” reflects Reshkus. “I like to have piano whenever I’m doing something, to add in elements like harmonic arpeggios.”

The challenge of structured classes and one-on-one sessions with mentors (a rare offering in online education that Soundfly’s Headliners Club provides) suited Reshkus, who liked the direction and creative impulse that flowed from limitations and rules. “I like boundaries. The choices are fewer, which makes it easier,” she muses. “I usually have an idea of something I want to express when I create, but I start everything with a limitation so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the possibilities.”

For Reshkus, creating for herself using skills painstakingly but joyfully acquired for strong teachers has been its own reward. She reports greater contentment and better mental health, thanks to the healing, energizing practice of making music in a new, challenging way. “I don’t have any grand ambitions. I don’t want to tour, say,” Reshkus states. “I just need to be creative. I don’t care if anyone likes it or if they listen. If they do and they get something from it, that’s wonderful. But I do this for my own wellbeing, and it’s a real gift.”