Alone Together

Quarantine Journals
Alone Together

"(Johann Hari's) 'Stolen Focus' addresses a wider range of causes but for a single target of concern: namely, how we are losing focus. Hari breaks down the many causes of our lack of attention into two categories: too much and too little. Too much information, stress, surveillance and manipulation, and ADHD diagnoses. Not enough sleep, novel reading, navel gazing and nutritious food. He doesn’t declare algorithms or even digital technology as the single culprit, since “information overload” has been creeping up on us and impairing our focus for some time.

(...)Nir Eyal (American writer, educator, and entrepreneur in the field of consumer psychology and behavioral design, known for his bestselling book, 'Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products') and people like him — the well-paid architects of this system — won’t be shamed and won’t change (...)

Second, although all the issues these books confront are real, they are part of a much larger problem, which is capitalism itself, or at least the incentives it creates for folks like Nir Eyal. To address that would mean turning to even bigger, less personal dilemmas, like the way automation is quickly replacing entry-level jobs, or private equity is using automated eviction algorithms to optimize the profit on their hundreds of thousands of homes, creating a homeless and jobless underclass in its wake. Runaway technology is here, and in many ways it’s worse than a lack of focus or will — but if we can connect the two, then perhaps we have a chance to improve our future."

-Cathy O' Neill, Why Can’t We Pay Attention Anymore? NY Times Feb 3 2022

https://nyti.ms/34vCFkS
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Distante - Alone Together, 2022

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