Hordes of oglers by the 3-D printers. A media mob around 50 Cent and his me-too headphones. Ad hoc TED-style talks. Dishwashers that tweet. Acrobats.

Walking the floor of last months Consumer Electronics Show was like wandering a Turkish bazaar. Only busier. I finally found an oasis of peace and quiet in a $7,000 massage chair (that nearly put me to sleep). And then, later, within the solitary, white plastic igloo in the middle of the exhibition floor.

I am seated inside that inflatable tent. The door is zipped closed. A wraparound headband is fitted across my temples. I am handed an iPad, my brain waves undulating on the screen.

A male, Siri-inflected voice commands me to imagine as many countries as I can in 30 seconds. When the device is calibrated, I am directed to close my eyes, slow my breathing, andimagine nothing. When my thoughts deviate, I hear thunder and storms from the iPad. When I am serene--and, rarely, I am not--I hear birds chirping, the sound of a trickling brook.

The Muse, invented by the Toronto-based InteraXon and available to consumers this year, could be big. I say that because the crusade for quietude has suddenly become a public fixation. A cause. Is this Susan Cain's doing? Maybe. "Mindfulness" made a February cover of Time--a lengthy piece that looks at how to mitigate stress in an age when virtual and literal reality vie for attention. The idea of mindfulness (in one case, brought to you by Goldie Hawn) also figured prominently at the 2014 World Economic Forum.

"Only two years ago, mindfulness and mindful leadership were discussed at Davos for the first time. Since then, almost all of the mindfulness-related events there have been oversubscribed, wrote Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT, on the Huffington Post. This year at least 25 sessions in Davos were dedicated to wellness and the adverse impact of technology on the human brain.

The Holy Grail of modernity, then, may just be serenity. The Muse and other mediation apps, like Get Some Headspace, are evidence that entrepreneurs are turning their talents toward bringing humanity into balance with the "Self."

What does this mean for the youngest, wealthiest generation of entrepreneurs that this country has ever seen? For one thing, a market opportunity. From Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskowitzs productivity company Asana, which lists "reason balanced with intuition" and "balance" in its top three values, to "neural self-hacking" at Google, to fresh takes on long form journalism, we are now deeply in the mindful mogul era. Look around at all the meditating, unplugging, chia seed-chomping masters of enterprise and it seems only a matter of time before the new hot yoga move is Downward Facing Alpha Dogs.

"I love what I do because ideas can change the world," says Chris Hughes, publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic. "We reach over 3 million people in any given month. That kind of reachits an immense opportunity to really have an impact."

Hughes, 31, whose net worth skyrocketed with the Facebook IPO, could have done anything with his fortune. Instead, he bought The New Republic in 2012--when print media was already in a free-fall, including the circulation of TNR, which had plummeted by nearly 50% and 50,000 from 2000 to 2009.

The rest is here:
Downward Facing Alpha Dogs: The Mindful Rise Of The New Tech Humanists