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Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

• Raphmedia 9y ago
  Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • QAPereo 9y ago
    Bullshit != Knowledge. Worse, bullshit benefits from the sharp end of Brandolini’s Law.
    • snerbles 9y ago
      “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” A blog entry on Brandolini's Law: https://real-psychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/brandolinis-law.html https://real-psychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/brandolinis-law...
      • ak39 9y ago
        I think this could apply to the ratio of coding to debugging too.
        • ghzkvhjk 9y ago
          What a coincidence. I copied this law to my collection of quotes, and the last entry was this: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" -Brian Kernighan
    • stcredzero 9y ago
      There's the old adage: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Let's take that seriously. It has always been much easier to imitate the semblance of meaning than it was to find the substantively meaningful. Things with only the semblance of meaning have always proliferated. Idle talk, children's rhymes, songs, music, myths... all of these have always proliferated. Why did they not drown out actual meaning? I think the above is one of the key questions for the survival of humanity. A part of the answer is that there has never been a clear demarcation between the meaningful and meaningless. There is valuable information in the structure of myth, songs, and idle talk. It is clear that something in human beings acts as an effective filter for meaning and value. It is also clear that rationality isn't the totality of whatever this is, though it might be a part of it.
      • telchar 9y ago
        I would argue that those things historically have drowned out actual meaning, if by actual meaning you mean factually correct and significant information. Only with the advent of science have we been able to reliably sort the meaningless from the meaningful. I think the major concern here, aside from the general deleterious effects of addiction of any sort on people, is that the tide of meaningless factoids and useless information is swelling and drowning out substantive, useful information which is generated with greater difficulty and spreads less easily. A greater ratio of meaninglessness to meaningfulness is part of the problem, compounded by the aggressive way our attention is directed toward it. I think the filter you mention exists but is struggling in this environment more than in the recent past.
        • stcredzero 9y ago
          I would argue that those things historically have drowned out actual meaning, Which is precisely why humanity didn't progress, never invented science, never improved human rights and the standard of living, and we died out in a state of primitive brutishness. Clearly, actual meaning has found its way through, somehow. I think the filter you mention exists but is struggling in this environment more than in the recent past. What is your evidence for this? Can you quantify this in objective terms?
    • deleted 9y ago
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  • api 9y ago
    I wouldn't put it that way. The problem is that a ton of the stuff impinging on us is not knowledge. It's propaganda, fluff, stupid memes, click bait, and systems with interfaces designed to be addictive and to act like Skinner boxes. What I really see happening is a "part 2" repeat of the spam apocalypse that hit e-mail, Usenet, and other federated systems on the early Internet. In the late 1990s spam destroyed most of these systems. E-mail was so valuable it had to be saved, but saving it has mostly involved delegating it to a small oligopoly of vertically integrated e-mail providers with the resources to fight spam. Usenet and other less well known federated systems were destroyed. I think we are now seeing a similar kind of spam assault against the open web, social media, and the news. The latter with the whole "fake news" phenomenon really resembles a Sybil attack. In recent years I've seen an avalanche of totally fake news sites that look like legitimate newspapers popped up (apparently from templates) and used to spam social media with a whole slew of unfounded allegations and other assorted bullshit. The role they've had in the election has gained a lot of press but it's in no way limited to that or even to politics. A lot of it seems to be shilling for quack medical products and other traditional mainstays of... spam! I've started calling this whole phenomenon "spam 2.0." I'd define spam 2.0 as the semi-automated bulk creation of fake news outlets, fake social media profiles, and hoaxes and their use to engage in the coordinated manipulation of opinion. I'm also anticipating the rise of spam 3.0. Spam 3.0 will be fully automated and AI-powered, with AI being used to create an individual "persuasive agent" for each human target. Think of it as massively parallel individual con artistry and/or "spear phishing" at scale. Social media companies are already pioneering this tech, but the spam apocalypse will really hit when it goes public and you can do it with readily available tools. I find it rather depressing but for a while I've been predicting that the first use of AI that can (even borderline) pass the Turing test will be con artistry, cult indoctrination techniques, and demagoguery at scale. It's really pretty scary to the point that I'm wondering if the use of AI to persuade humans should be outlawed. Of course then you get the "then only criminals will have guns" effect. This is particularly true on the borderless Internet where it's unlikely to be outlawed everywhere. Users of this tech would just go offshore. An alternative to outlawing might be to disseminate the tools as widely as possible to eliminate any comparative advantage and render the whole thing moot. If this destroys social media in the process then so be it. Going to happen anyway. Edit: the bottom line is that "cognitive self-defense" is going to become a thing. These "warning signs for tomorrow" are becoming relevant: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/warning4.png http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/warning4.png We are living in a cyberpunk novel.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    I don't think "knowledge" is necessarily what we're getting. I learn a lot more reading a single nonfiction book than I do in an equivalent amount of time spent on Twitter and Facebook.
    • johnvonneumann 9y ago
      This. I have been staunch anti-social media for a while now, but not long ago I heard someone from a community I'm involved in say that the conversation on twitter was actually pretty intelligent so I signed up. You hear about how it's good to use these sites because you occasionally get pearls of wisdom, Nassim Taleb (funny because he actually has a twitter account) referred to it as digging through mountains of shit to find diamonds, sure, you may find a diamond, but you'll also be covered in shit. EDIT: Deleted my twitter account after a month, wanna nerf LinkedIn as well but that decision has professional impacts.
  • cirgue 9y ago
    Except we're not bingeing on knowledge, we're binging on text. Knowledge requires construction and interaction.
• snerbles 9y ago
  One can argue that this isn't really anything new - look back at the media hype for war surrounding an explosion of a certain U.S. warship. In 1898. Amusing, how the most vaunted prize in journalism is named for one of the most famous perpetrators of yellow journalism. Social media is merely a slimmer middle man in that frenzied feedback loop, and the legacy media is upset that their slice of the pie is shrinking.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    The printing press was instrumental to the Protestant Reformation too, but I'm not sure social media is quite the same.
  • wslh 9y ago
    The difference is how we are connected now 100% with media (and mobile device notifications) where before people lived mainly unconnected and with cognitive "load" instead of cognitive offloading. Not saying that the past was better but rather than we need to build new cognitive/policy tools against new media.
    • cracell 9y ago
      > The difference is how we are connected now 100% I think 100% is misleading. You could say that a morning newspaper connected people 100% when that was a new thing. Phones/computers only connect us as often as we use them to connect. For instance something like AR goggles with a constant ticker of information would connect us even more. I think it's more accurate to simply say that we are more connected. In specifics that the 24 hour cycle of evening news and morning newspapers has changed into an on-demand system that pushes information to people that want to receive it and that anyone can pull it when they have free time.
  • msabalau 9y ago
    Or the way that religions dominated the attentions of earlier times--with the occasional social surplus being squandered on cathedral building, crusades, heresy and it's suppression, pilgrimages, self-mortification etc.
• yosito 9y ago
  As someone who works in tech, I like the analogy of a DoS attack. The root of the issue is attention capitalism. Our attention is essentially a resource being exploited for profit. In that scenario, we're effectivley no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. On an individual scale, we can give it relatively benign labels like "distraction". But when you look at it from macro scale it's effectively a DDoS attack on our free will perpetrated by all of the companies trying to get a slice of the pie of our attention.
  • dmfdmf 9y ago
    > In that scenario, we're effectively no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. This is a self contradiction. You always have the choice to turn off or tune out the distractions and focus your attention on more important things (which is the essence of free will). That people don't feel like doing that is a psychological problem not a problem with capitalism or profit seeking.
    • eyeinthepyramid 9y ago
      That raises interesting questions -- how much free will does an addict have? Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction?
      • wu-ikkyu 9y ago
        >Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction? When it comes to drug law, precedent would show that they are far more culpable than the user/addict.
        • Jach 9y ago
          Behind every addict there's usually an enabler in some form. Sometimes there's a nasty feedback loop. Of course that doesn't negate human agency or its importance, however it makes for a convenient excuse. Agency seems unevenly distributed, but it also seems to vary within a single individual depending on what sorts of things they face and what excuses they have to avoid exercising it. Humans have a wide range of adaptations. In the modern world where even the very poor can live better than the wealthiest in olden times, exercising much agency isn't that important.
• JepZ 9y ago
  > Choice is such a messy thing to dive deep into, because then you realize that nobody knows what it means to choose. Actually, I think I do know what it means, but I have the feeling that many people do not like the idea, that their decisions are based on past experiences and that their free will is actually just the evaluation of their perceptions (of their truth) and therefore, it is nothing that comes from some spritual origin within them, but instead is something that happend to them. While it feels a little incomfortable at first, it explains a lot of human behavior as for example the impact of advertiments. The important part is to also understand that it does not free you from your own responsibility as the fact that you have beeen tought ethics is also part of the evaluation.
  • ehecatl 9y ago
    >> that their decisions are based on past experiences and that their free will is actually just the evaluation of their perceptions (of their truth) This might be pretty close to the mark, actually. Our conditioning to past, even collective, social, experience can become so all encompassing that we cannot imagine something "other". Perhaps psychopaths can? And that's a pretty scary thought.
    • deleted 9y ago
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    • deleted 9y ago
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    • lazerpants 9y ago
      I think meditation, some types of travel, and/or certain illicit drugs are important to people because they are able to temporarily experience what you have described as "other", to varying degrees, utilizing the aforementioned agents/techniques.
  • MarkPNeyer 9y ago
    Choosing means: a) evaluating multiple possible outcomes b) selecting from those the outcome with the highest desired value c) taking the action with increases the likelihood of the desired outcome That's it, end of story. No "spiritual nonsense" necessary. This definition lines up with human intuition, and it also applies to determinstic things like machines. For example, Using this definition we can say things like 'the load balancer chose that server' and even ask why. This definition allows you to debug choice-making processes, and reason about them. So when we ask 'why did the load balancer choose this server', it would be absurd to answer 'because the programmer told it to.' It's true, but empty. The same applies to the claim that 'lots of what people are doing is the impact of advertising'. True, but vacuous. Why did things happen? "Well, because of physics" - that's a true answer to every question that tells us nothing. Of COURSE we can improve the choice making mechanism inside a load balancer. That fact is obvious to us. What's less obvious is that you can improve the choice making mechanism INSIDE OF YOU because you aren't a static object but rather a sequence of different deterministic objects. In each moment, your neural connectome changes slightly. Pathways that you activate become more automatic, and pathways you don't activate atrophy. You activate pathways by selectively activating your attention. That's how you do it. That's how you change yourself, so that you are a different person who makes different choices. That's how you improve your decision making apparatus - by being good at selectively paying increasing attention to signals that are helping you. Individual persons can improve their choice-making mechanisms as well. I know becuase i've done it. I struggled for years making bad choices, and i always used logic like you are using to tell myself 'it wasn't my fault'. That may have been true, but it was useless. It didn't help me make better choices. Only by accepting that I am responsible for the choices i make, and _embracing this fact_ was i able to change my choice making apparatus from something that was pretty terrible to something that works quite well. When you go around telling people they don't have free well, you're jamming up their choice making apparatus. You're convincing people not to bother making choices. It's probably worse than advertising. Making better choices comes down, ultimately, to controlling your attention during the choice making process. I agree that advertising is super destructive. It's like the opposite of meditation.
• zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Media has always been a way to manipulate people. What’s different ? People love to reinforce their own beliefs on the world and what they read. They will select what to read and what to ignore. People read newspapers and would believe the things that appeal to them.
  • djaychela 9y ago
    What's different is that the means are now present to customise the media that you see to your exact preferences, for one; That's a step change away from (say) a newspaper which is going to have some content which doesn't align perfectly with your existing views. There's a world of other things happening (in terms of apps also being engineered to be addictive in terms of their behaviour) as well - this isn't simply that people are being manipulated, it's that the means are now present to customise the manipulation and make it entirely personal for every user.
• partycoder 9y ago
  People build a model of their world based on stimuli. You cannot be present everywhere so you trust other people to perceive things for you. That trust is often abused by injecting bias. And this is done to exert influence over people. Same trust is abused to certain extent by historians through revisionism. Same trust is abused by organized religion, where they control the rules of how you get favored by supreme beings. In some cases those rules are intrincated and arbitrary, like wasting your life building a pyramid, or entering a structure designated as temple every week, or believing other people belong to a better caste (where coincidentally the religious caste is usually at the top).
• rglover 9y ago
  Reminder: you have a choice. You can turn off Facebook, the media, et. al. and regain your focus.
• rdtsc 9y ago
  > The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it doesn’t necessarily protect freedom of attention. Just to point out, it protects the freedom of speech in relation to what the government can do. Most of social and news platform are someone's property, and by default if they don't want users to talk about certain things they are free to ask them to leave. They might pay lip service and invoke a general desire for freedom of speech but are not legally bound to do any of that.
• shmageggy 9y ago
  I would gladly pay for something like what is advocated for in this article, but I'm not aware of anything like it. A news publication that: * Has the goal of filtering rather than flooding * No ads * No pop-ins 3/4 of the way through the article telling me about four other articles I should read * No endless scrolling * Upfront about bias * Cites sources
  • smsm42 9y ago
    Wikipedia? And Wikinews? Probably not "upfront about bias" part, but the rest matches pretty well.
    • shmageggy 9y ago
      I don't see how wikis could serve as filters. Seems like their comprehensive nature runs contrary to filtering by design.
      • smsm42 9y ago
        Despite the comprehensive nature, there are notability and POV neutrality requirements in Wikis. Of course, you may need even narrower filters, in which case I guess these would need additional tooling?
  • aag 9y ago
    I am a huge fan of Blendle, the news micropayments system, which meets the first four of these criteria. The last two depend on the underlying news organization.
    • shmageggy 9y ago
      This looks really intriguing. I've signed up for the beta. Thanks!
  • theonemind 9y ago
    This actually reminds me of Delayed Gratification https://www.slow-journalism.com/ https://www.slow-journalism.com/ . I don't think they make an online version of anything, though. You get it in print. A quarter (3 month) time delay helps with the filtering. No bother about what Trump tweeted on any given day. Kind of like a history book being written in "real time".
• tribune 9y ago
  I've been coming to resent my smartphone more and more, essentially because of this. I recently quit using tobacco. I remembered all the warnings from my school health classes about how hard it was to quit once you start, how there's a physical dependence and all that. It was uncomfortable at times, and there were plenty of cravings to get over, but I was ultimately successful. I can compare this to the couple of times I've tried to "quit the Internet" (i.e. social media, reddit, etc.). The problem is that there's nowhere to run from the Internet. I can avoid tobacco stores, I can't avoid my iPhone. For what it's worth, I'd love to smash my phone and throw it in a ditch, but there are certain social and professional obligations that require me to hold onto it. I have to be able to check my work email on the go. I have to use Facebook to stay in the loop about social events because all my friends use Facebook to schedule those social events. I have to call my parents once in a while. One device is a tool for all of those, in addition to being an ultra-high-tech meme-box with which I can mainline information to make myself feel good. It is of course not all bad, but the wonderful connectivity of the Internet is inextricably wrapped up with the "DoS Attack on Your Free Will". To get back to the analogy, I'd like to think I was successful at quitting tobacco because I can avoid it. If I were giving someone tips to quit something, that's the best advice I could think to offer: avoid it. If you want to quit smoking, wouldn't it be preposterous to buy a pack of cigarettes and carry it everywhere? The temptation would always be there. So it is with smartphones. When the best minds in attention capitalism are trying to pull me in every time I send a text message, how can I quit that? It's always in my pocket, and I can't simply throw it away because there are now certain expectations that I carry that tool with me almost everywhere I go. There is nowhere to run from this modern media, and that terrifies me.
  • auggierose 9y ago
    Don't check your work email on the go. Quit facebook. It is actually pretty simple!
    • bdamm 9y ago
      I don't know why you got downvoted. It's both simple and hard. I quit facebook back in March. Yep, some people don't talk to me anymore. But you know what? I talk with other people more, and I'm enjoying those relationships more. It's also hard; this is a top-of-class addiction. There's nothing easy about rewiring the reward circuit of your brain. And definitely Facebook, work email and in my case ycombinator news, are wired in to the reward circuit - for the relief of boredom, or even the relief of hard work (or the appearance of that relief anyway.)
• aero142 9y ago
  Anyone know how to get the full text of his essay? I can find links to excerpts but I really don't want to read other people's summaries of his essay.
• Kenji 9y ago
  Bullshit. The only attack on my free will is people telling me what is an attack on my free will and thus pushing their agenda. I would NEVER EVER want to give up the incredible availability of information we have today. Even if most of it is nonsense, that still means there is a mountain of gems that's larger than the eye can see.
• ryandrake 9y ago
  Ironically, the first thing you're greeted with on this site is an attention-grabbing ad, if you choose to browse without protection. If modern media a DoS attack, it's not very sophisticated since it can be easily avoided by non-participation. Install an Ad blocker. Browse the web in private mode. Turn off notifications. Treat everything you read with skepticism (assume it is trying to manipulate you). And never, ever interact with social media. Share your attention deliberately, mindfully, and voluntarily. I don't buy into this victim mentality. Nobody is "stealing" my attention unless I agree to it.
  • crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    Oh, just wait until the hordes come out of the woodwork to poo-poo you for blocking ads and such. They have their reasons, like "No Ads means no free content", or "You're taking the money out of content creators mouths", or variations on a theme. What's doubly silly, is I control how my computer renders what content, downloads what content, and does whatever actions I want. Once it leaves your computer/network, its no longer up to you, ad company. (Is now waiting for Wildvine to be used on content, forcing such ad viewage, now that DRM is part of the bloody HTML5 spec.)
    • hsod 9y ago
      Seems inevitable. Unfortunately, the content companies have a lot of leverage because they are the ones making the content that you want to see.
    • bobbinsbob 9y ago
      That's the thing though. If those ads are forced on you say like in-game ads you can't skip then I'll just do what I do with them. Something else. Volume down, attention elsewhere until it's over. Just like those old unskippable YouTube ads. I might not be able to skip them but they don't get any of my attention either way.
  • jesperlang 9y ago
    I've taken it a bit further with my ad blocker. Started blocking not just ads but irrelevant things like: * Top/Related posts (they distract) * Newsletter signup blocks in the middle of articles (I never ever want to signup for newsletters) * Sharing tools (I know how to cut-past a URL, thank you) * Recent comments blocks (I don't care) * Page footers (bloated with completely irrelevant information) * ... and so on You will be surprised how much stuff you can actually just block!
• ypeterholmes 9y ago
  Blaming technology for our dysfunctional political system is all kinds of backwards. The political system is broken because of corruption within our financial/judicial/media institutions. If anything, technology is our best hope to fix those problems. For example, look at this discussion we are having right here.
• xmly 9y ago
  Maybe it is because you do not have a FREE WILL at all.
• xmly 9y ago
  I just thought you are talking about FREE WIFI...
• Ygg2 9y ago
  Wait, isn't there no such thing as free will, according to science?
• drcode 9y ago
  This reminds me of how easy it was in the early days of Hacker News to get on the front page with a project: In our new media world, the only way to get onto the Hacker News front page, or any other site, is to either have a post highly targeted for this site (with these sort of DoS elements) or blind chance.
• rado 9y ago
  Yes. Media has been dead since the Kuwaiti girl testimony in 1990. It's done, it's over, today's scandals are just aftershocks of that turning point.
  • schoen 9y ago
    For people who aren't familiar with this incident, you can read about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • anigbrowl 9y ago
    This hyperbole isn't helpful, with the implication that this never happened before in history. I'm guessing that's just the specific incident that led to you being more cynical. Deception and manipulation of public sentiment by either wholly fabricated or suddenly-scandalous news (ie digging up some old incident and setting up a great hue and cry like it just happened) is an old, old propaganda technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear I'm sure there are similar examples from the Roman Republic when it was operating as an actual Republic rather than an appendage of empire.
    • rado 9y ago
      Yes, precisely. Thanks.
• wallace_f 9y ago
  A meta comment on this article: I have posted this concept here, and on other social media platforms, and seen it posted as well... usually to the tune of a few upvotes... It reminds me of Keyne's General Theory, where most of the ideas had already been floated for quite a while but were always derided as "crackpot," or basically heresy. It took a well-connected elite, combined with a failure to explain the current situation to really change the Groupthink of collective minds and institutions. Here, it's similar: an idea which has been floated before, but taken in the hands of an academic is formalized, given a $100,000 prize, and published. Which raises an interesting idea. If the problem with the radio--as the article showed, Hitler put one in every home--was that an authority could control a bombardment of information-assault on people--the same problem with tech today--should we not also be skeptical also of why authorities have now decided to grant credence to this idea? And here's the concern: as the article also said, the role of media and newspapers has been to be a "filter." I can imagine politicians and bureaucrats latching onto this as a power grab for authorities--as a means to further marginalize independent media and the social aspects of spreading information.
  • anigbrowl 9y ago
    The social aspects of information propagation are anything but marginalized. The problem, as in the days of yellow journalism, is that sensation is easier to monetize than the truth and this creates opportunities for bad actors to flourish. Of course there's a possibility for over-reaction and repression, but personally I think that the best solution is more information, in the sense of accessible trackbacks (not unlike country-of-origin food labeling) so people can see where stories originate and learn to be skeptical of stuff that comes from consistently unreliable or bizarre sources. This already happens to some extent, eg if you post content from infowars you'll be rightly mocked for using such a terrible source. The Web Annotations Standard will make this vastly easier as its deployed in browsers (anyone know about progress on that, BTW?). As for the other problem of people choosing to stay in particular media bubbles where they're only presented with information they already agree with, that's not really going to change, but I think that's OK as long as it's easy to identify which cluster people are choosing to locate in.
    • 9y ago
• jimmytucson 9y ago
  The same is true for TV and radio. Think of all the popular culture that's been created and paid for, not directly, but by merely agreeing to have commercials on in your home for a few minutes. This still boggles my mind. How can viewing advertisements be an adequate substitute for paying cash?
  • anigbrowl 9y ago
    Because the marginal cost of the advertising in a large market is so low. A handy rule of thumb is that you spend about the same amount on marketing that you do on product development; the actual production and distribution costs per unit are much lower. Either your product is a flop and you shut down and move on, or it's a hit and you have yourself a nice little income stream.
• unholiness 9y ago
  I personally haven't found the same effect in long-form media, such as: - Non-fiction books - University-centered online courses - Documentaries - Some of Netflix's original programs - Wikipedia's monthly news summaries - The "Great Courses" on Audible These media aren't thoroughly monetized on a pay-per-attention-stolen model. They're more optimized around having good reviews from friends and online. It makes me wonder if there might be the possibility of a Netflix for news, where a 3rd party curates and allows ratings of lengthier pieces on long-term issues, interviews with important figures, and 20-minute investigative reports (like I remember seeing on 60 minutes). Naturally, this wouldn't work for up-to-the minute news where everyone's attention is driven based on who's got the latest break, but it seems like it would work for these other things. It would still give the "lunch conversation" motivation, where people could talk about whatever was released in the last few days. Certainly it sounds like a less attention-assaulting place than the current state of news.
  • rhizome 9y ago
    It makes me wonder if there might be the possibility of a Netflix for news, where an 3rd party curates and allows ratings of lengthier pieces on long-term issues, interviews with important figures, and 20-minute investigative reports (like I remember seeing on 60 minutes) Isn't this essentially the model that HuffPo and other news aggregators (rewriters) use? Hasn't really panned out in that context, but maybe there needs to be a more quality-focussed site that isn't subject so much to avarice.
    • unholiness 9y ago
      The question of who creates the content is mostly orthogonal to what I mean. I'm talking about is a platform where my decision to click/watch content is based on reviews and recommendations, not loud design and attention-grabbing headlines. In that world, the subscription model could make sense and content aggregation could make sense, but neither is required, nor does either addressing the issue on its own.
      • addicted 9y ago
• Jean-Philipe 9y ago
  I'd pay Facebook to be ad free. Why don't they want my money?
  • rhizome 9y ago
    You can't afford to pay them the amount they make from the ads you see/click. UPDATE: 2016 revenue is $27B. At 2B MAUs, that's a little more than $1/mo. Hmm. Surely there's something I'm overlooking.
    • Deimorz 9y ago
      They don't value all users equally, ones in North America are generally worth considerably more. From a quick search, I can't find any more recent info, but in Jan 2016 a user from USA/Canada was worth $13.54/quarter [1], so that would be about $54/year. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-are-you-worth-to-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-...
      • avdempsey 9y ago
        Also, the users who can afford to pay to remove ads may be the same ones that increase the value of their advertising products overall.
        • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
          Exactly, Facebook have access to eyeballs that other media corps don't. The value is in part because of the aggregate being comprehensive, as you remove people from the sample the resulting data gets less valuable much faster.
    • YungCabbage 9y ago
      It's not a matter of simple price per user. At its core, their product is the incredibly precise and nuanced network they have constructed though their various sources of user data. The value they get per click/view is only so valuable because companies are willing to pay for the quality of targeted advertising that only a company on the scale of facebook can provide. This model allows FB to keep their platform free for users, lowering the barrier to entry meaning that more people are likely to join the network, whose data makes FB's advertising system all the more effective. More data means a better user experience (and better advertising), which naturally draws in more users to add their data to the pool. The end result is a virtuous cycle that provides companies with this model the best data, the most users, and the best targeted advertising in their respective fields. This model is the endgame of companies like Facebook, Gooogle and Amazon, and is the reason FB isn't interested in your $1.
• HoppedUpMenace 9y ago
  "The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it doesn’t necessarily protect freedom of attention." Are you suggesting that people's free will is so easily lost that we needed to have, in the First Amendment, a clause stating "freedom from external thought influences"? "Modern Media is a DoS Attack on Your Free Will" Only if you allow it to be, just like with any other compulsive activity, if it starts affecting your life negatively, you should probably make some personal life changes. This reads like a call for government regulation of advertising or how content is served to people because people cannot defend themselves from this media onslaught. I believe something similar to China's regulation of the web may be what you're looking for, but I'm old enough to vote and go to war so I'm old enough to decide how often my "free will" is attacked.
  • Mahn 9y ago
    The problem is that a lot of people can't help themselves from falling prey to the attention seeking media. I don't know whether this is something that should be regulated, but there is some responsibility on the party that's exploiting people's time fully knowing what they are doing, not just on the addicted consumer.
    • gaius 9y ago
      Of course they know. FOMO is a real thing evolved into your brain over millions of years in which being apart from the tribe meant greatly reduced chances of survival. When FB sends you a notification to say "your friends are doing something without you" they are knowingly and deliberately pushing that button.
  • dps7ud 9y ago
    I think this is addressed in the article: > Isn’t it our own fault that we’re too easily distracted? Maybe we just need more self-discipline. > That kind of rhetoric implicitly grants the idea that it’s okay for technology to be adversarial against us. The whole point of technology is to help us do what we want to do better. Why else would we have it? ... > Does personal responsibility matter at all? > I don’t think personal responsibility is unimportant. I think it’s untenable as a solution to this problem. Even people who write about these issues day to day, even me—and I worked at Google for 10 years—need to remember the sheer volume and scale of resources that are going into getting us to look at one thing over another, click on one thing over another. This industry employs some of the smartest people, thousands of Ph.D. designers, statisticians, engineers. They go to work every day to get us to do this one thing, to undermine our willpower. It’s not realistic to say you need to have more willpower. That’s the very thing being undermined!
• m3kw9 9y ago
  As AI get smarter and places like Google collect more data about you, they will eventually know all the right buttons to press to get you to look and not look away.
• jccalhoun 9y ago
  complains about tech distracting us... has a popover ad that greys out and covers the text of the story...
• ckastner 9y ago
  > Modern Media is a DoS Attack on Your Free Will Being saturated by Modern Media is an exercise of Free Will. An attack is an act of force that requires active defense. The Modern Media is not forcing me to ready anything, nor do I have to actively defend myself against the Modern Media. If turning of your cell phone for a period seems like an unfathomable task to you, perhaps you didn't have that much Free Will in the first place.
  • dclowd9901 9y ago
    If free will, as we understand it, is the ability to renounce things despite our brain injecting itself with endorphins while we're subjected to it, then you're right: it's quite nothing at all aside from having a strong constitution. The problem is we're talking about the manipulation of the brain's fundamental functions that undermine even low level thought processes (including determination). It's scarcely different than brain washing, and I don't think you can just blame the individual on this, when these efforts are aimed at the peak of the bell curve. This is something that we have to resolve or risk forfeiting civil society.
    • ckastner 9y ago
      Your argument is sound, but nevertheless, I'd still argue that if one is susceptible to manipulations of this sort, there wasn't much Free Will to be DoS'ed in the first place. Manipulations of this sort have been effective long before Modern Media were a thing. I see them as just one instrument, but I don't believe that fixing this instrument will fix the problem.
• xxyyttuq1 9y ago
  If you haven't seen it, watch The Century of the Self [1]. It's largely a documentary about the emergence of PR as an application of propaganda to control the population in times of peace, revolving around Edward Bernays. [2] Viewing the modern situation through a lens informed by the history put forth in the documentary, there's nothing surprising in the least going on - it's the logical progression, and exactly what Bernays would aspire to do had the technology been available. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
• kunal88 9y ago
  Good info
• DanielleMolloy 9y ago
  The machines have already learned to exploit our vulnerabilities and control us..
• marstall 9y ago
  language itself is a means of control.
• trhway 9y ago
  We'll we see similar to tobacco lawsuits - they knew it was addictive, used it for profit and even intentionally increased addictiveness, and didn't even put warning on. Cue similar contra argument about free will of consumer choice. Uncanny similarity of Facebook and tobacco addiction is because they use the same dopamine biological machinery .
• aryehof 9y ago
  I think that modern media is something that needs to be carefully regulated. The degree of civil liberty one enjoys should be not only be considered as freedom from rules and regulations that limit our unreasonable actions and speech, but also freedom from being mentally assaulted and manipulated by those seeking to influence and control our thoughts, spending, votes, and opinions.
• deleted 9y ago
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• woodandsteel 9y ago
  Great article. I have a couple of thoughts. One is that the reason humans can be so easily manipulated is our built-in neurological mechanisms for directing attention were designed by evolution for the very different environment of a hunter-gatherer existence. The other thought has to do with what to do about the problem. A lot of people are talking about things that individuals can do, like limiting their time on their smart phone. Well, that can work for them, but most people won't do that, so it doesn't solve the much larger problem of having a society that is becoming deeply dysfunctional in part because of media manipulation. It seems to me that to solve this we need two things. One is web decentralization. The other is that people need to learn good critical thinking skills, and also skills for problem-solving discussion, as in Marshall Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication.
• shaunparker 9y ago
  Sorry if this is off topic, but Nautilus seems to really need support[0]. I received an email this morning from the editor asking "to make an end of year tax deductible contribution to keep the stories coming. Anything you could donate would be greatly appreciated". If you enjoy their content, please consider subscribing. I'm not affiliated with Nautilus in any way, just a concerned subscriber. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227337
• dnetesn 9y ago
  From this weekends NY Times...."Our Love Affair With Digital Is Over" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/opinion/sunday/internet-digital-technology-return-to-analog.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/opinion/sunday/internet-d...
• quickthrower2 9y ago
  Modern Media is definitely another addictive thing that one needs to manage. As an older git, I try to remember what it was like in the 80's with no phone, no distractions. Even watching a movie is an event that needs planning in advance. But how do I convey this to my kids, growing up with this? The only way I can think is we do holidays where we go offline for the week, and maybe set an example at home by limiting the device usage. I like the idea of a purpose-driven use of tech. You go on the computer and think 'I need to do a, b, c' then do it and turn it off. Usually Facebook won't be in that list. But it might be e.g. "I need to ask a question on this FB group, reply to a message ... then sign out immediately" It is like have a list for the supermarket, which is trying to pedal sugary snacks to you as well as "special offers" that make you spend more money. The list (and going after a meal) is your defense against this.
  • lbotos 9y ago
    I live a life very similar to this. My phone only has instagram on it (and I'm considering removing) but I try to "use with intent". A recent HN comment that summed it up brilliantly: "It was when Going Online was still a ritual, just like starting up the computer was - it took a while, sometimes you had to go through a menu or start up Windows or whatever separately still, you got this jingle when starting up, sometimes a login screen, all that stuff. Then going online, dialing up, telling the family (if any) that you're using the internet for a while, firing up the browser, etc. Using the internet was (for most people anyway) a very focused task too, given the per minute charge - get online, do what you want, get offline again." -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635817
• lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  And walks in nature are the Cloudflare
• mudil 9y ago
  The problem is not journalism, the problem is platforms that encourage crap for their own monetary gains. https://www.recode.net/2017/11/20/16677194/tina-brown-vanity-fair-diaries-new-yorker-daily-beast-facebook-google-decode-kara-swisher-podcast https://www.recode.net/2017/11/20/16677194/tina-brown-vanity...
• reubenswartz 9y ago
  "What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." - Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize-winning economist, back in 1971.
  • forapurpose 9y ago
    > Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize-winning economist Believe it or not, that understates the man. He's also one of the fathers of AI and won the Turing Award, he wrote the book (of his era) on industrial organization, and was a leading researcher in many fields, including cognitive psychology and cognitive science. His PhD was actually in political science. A true polymath.
• tareqak 9y ago
  Is there a way to see a history of notifications in both Android and iOS at all? It would be nice to be able to actually disable notifications permissions for apps that are more spammy than I expected them to be.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    Not AFAIK. This, by the way, is something that bugs the heck out of me about Google. Massively data-driven firm. Denies the public access to data about its own use of tools.
• natural219 9y ago
  My biggest question is: When are people going to stop spilling ink over this issue and actually fix it? Here are some things that won't work: 1) Continue writing long thinkpieces about how bad big tech companies are and how they should feel bad 2) starting Yet Another Startup, raising $50 million in VC funding, and repeating all the same problems 5-10 years down the road. 3) Government regulation. Watch the recent Facebook/Google/Twitter congressional hearings if you want to hear the state of tech understanding in our government... Here's what does work: 1) Pursue and promote technological standardization / decentralization efforts regarding social platforms. These problems would be very easily fixable if 1,000 developers agreed to build out a single web standards that encapsulated social data, discovery, and communication. I keep a small list at http://decentralize.tech http://decentralize.tech, but the list is only growing (Beaker/Rotonde, Mastodon/Gnusocial/Activitypub, Blockstack, IPFS, Urbit, Brave/BAT, IndieWebCamp, Scuttlebutt -- All groups with working software today you could work on that kills this and other problems overnight). tldr; Stop complaining about things you got for free and build the dang alternative already.
• deleted 9y ago
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• common_01 9y ago
  "he co-founded Time Well Spent, a 'movement to stop technology platforms from hijacking our minds,'" But I'm sure he isn't at all biased. :-/
• johnvega 9y ago
  How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. https://goo.gl/K5xLSs https://goo.gl/K5xLSs
• free_everybody 9y ago
  Stop carrying your smartphone. Leave it at home. If you must because your family/work depends on you, then delete every app. Use your laptop as your main driver. If you need to, get a laptop with better battery life. Start developing a personal philosophy of internet usage. Here is mine: Category 3 [Abstain from completely] Reddit (Yes, all of reddit), Facebook ... Category 2 [Check once every couple days ~15 min total] Serious news sites (NYT, WashPo, WSJ) ... Category 3 [Check daily ~30 min total] Twitter (Follow helpful people only), HN, Medium This article makes some really good points. Our media is becoming adversarial. Developing a time management plan is essential. I can't let my time fall victim to the system. I don't have enough to throw away.
  • eckza 9y ago
    I love this, I love this, I love this. Right now, I am about a month along with no Facebook or Messenger. Previously I spent hours per day on both, running a pretty large community group and supporting its members. I disappeared; no explanation. Stress levels are down, I have so much more time to do things, and I have so much more attention for the things that really matter. Anybody that needs me, has my phone number; and at least for now, SMS isn't a gamified platform (I'm looking at you, Snapchat). Any social media apps (I compulsively install and uninstall Instagram a few times a week because on one hand, it's awesome; on the other hand, I end up putting too much time into it) have notifications disabled. Getting an Apple Watch was the real game changer. Now, if my phone goes off, I don't even have to look at it or stop what I'm doing. I can decide whether or not to engage with the incoming notification without risking getting sucked into "being on my phone". With LTE, I can even leave the god damn phone in the car, at my desk, or in my locker at the gym without having to worry about missing an important call. HN is my ground zero for everything and while it may be a little dangerous to only read news and articles that are posted on the same website, you all are pretty balanced and nuanced people from reasonably diverse backgrounds and worldviews, so I'm not that worried about it.
    • vvanders 9y ago
      I love my Pebble for the same reason and I'm really dreading when they will become hard to come by. I already lost one Time Round to a swelling LiPo and nothing else has a similar form factor.
• pcprincipal 9y ago
  Highly recommend Moment for iOS for tracking phone usage. I feel like I've gamified how much time I spent on my phone and am shooting for <30 minutes / day.
• xster 9y ago
  Wow, this is the most clear, succinct way of expressing it I've seen so far. The beginning of a new era!
• flanbiscuit 9y ago
  It's not just the distraction from media, it's also the many ways that people can get in touch with each other. I recently wrote down all the many ways a person can reach me and it was ridiculous. Mobile: Voice calls, SMS Email: Personal x 2, Work, Work shared inbox, Some shared inboxes for side projects Apps: Facebook Commenting, Messenger chat, Messenger Calling, WhatsApp multiple group chats, Whats app Calling, Slack (Active in about 5 different Slack channels), Discord (Active in 2 discord channels), Google Hangouts, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Google’s Duo app Sites: Reddit, Hacker News I could probably go on. I turn off all main notifications for all apps. The only notifications I leave on are @ mentions in a couple apps because I know they won't come often.
• chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Not to sound old school - because I am - but I believe that the medium effects the ability to comprehend the message (which happens before the wonky / faux message is received). That is, there is a difference between reading (e.g., newspaper or magazine) and watching. Reading is proactive (so to speak). It engages the brain because the brain must be engaged in order to complete the activity. Furthermore, pausing to digest, or "rewind" to reread is completely natural. So much so, for a given read you probably do it more than you realize. (I know I do.) On the other hand, watching is passive. The brain can step back / dial-down and still complete the activity. From that position, you're less likely (on average) to question what's presented you. Stoners don't pick up War & Peace, they turn on the TV, right :) Note: Yes, these are generalization. Yes, there are always exceptions. In addition - and there is some science that supports this - there is a difference between reading via paper and via a screen. My hunch is the brain gets conditioned to the medium. If your screen is mostly for junkfood (as it seems to be for so many of us) the brain is more likely to enter that relationship (so to speak) making certain presumptions. I suppose this could be similar to any learning. For example, they say that if you want maximum results for taking an exam you should study in the room where you'll take the example. Context effects learning / understanding.
  • gukov 9y ago
    Reading releases dopamine at a much slower pace than something that's visually stimulating. Facebook news feed is mostly images and videos now. If you ever catch someone using Facebook, watch them for a few minutes: it's just mindless scrolling of images. It's as if there's a line of breadcrumbs laid in front of them and they're picking it up one by one and following the trail. Visually heavy content + infinite scroll = a human trap
    • chiefalchemist 9y ago
      Right. It's a less engaged form of engaged, more passive. Not sleeping, but not thinking either. Human trap? Or more like a rat on a wheel? Makes ya wonder what effect more characters will have on Twitter, and those who use it.
• nemo44x 9y ago
  All the time you spend on social networks, news sites and other junk food properties you should spend time reading tech docs of various techs you don't yet really understand. Just read their docs and blogs, etc instead of reading wasteful sites. It's tough but it really feels good when you get a good streak going.
• Moru 9y ago
  Ofcourse all real hackers saw this coming already 25 years ago :) I did not get a mobile phone because I wanted to be off when I wasn't working. When mobile internet came I kept only the nokia I was forced to have, just so I could not get email when I was off work. Still do not use twitter or anything else. Recently bought a tv but nothing on so seldom used. Kids friends visiting always says "oh, what a small tv!" (32 inch).
  • eckza 9y ago
    I feel you! I had a 32", only upgraded to a 42" because my brother was selling it for $100. 42" seems huge to me but everyone I know has 70", 80" TVs.
  • c0nducktr 9y ago
    https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gatekeeping
  • a_imho 9y ago
    Different strokes. I would really like if people who prefer dumb devices (TWI - things without internet) would have more choices, but it seems like this is still a niche not really worth catering to.
• ekianjo 9y ago
  > DoS Attack on Free Will what a convoluted way to say ”distraction”.
• siavosh 9y ago
  I would bet there's a market for a 'feature' phone that has the essentials for most people (voice, sms, gps maps), no apps. All branded under a premium lifestyle brand that makes you feel special.
• jackmott 9y ago
  got a pop up modal when I started reading. I was killed by the irony.
• krisdol 9y ago
  For anyone interested in further study of media's relationship to psychology and sociology, I cannot recommend enough Marshall Macluhan's writings and lectures. He may have been the first to argue that media is an extension of the human brain. Specifically, look up "The medium is the message" for videos of his central argument, or read "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man".
  • wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    >Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. -Marshall McLuhan (p.73 of the 1966 Signet paperback edition)
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• amatecha 9y ago
  The irony is overwhelming: a screen-takeover modal advertisement for some "Black Friday" sale popped up over the article content as I attempted to start reading it.
• dreamdu5t 9y ago
  Take responsibility for your choices and your votes. You are not helpless. Blaming Trump’s election (which this article insuates by equating his victory with the failure of democracy) on social media is incredibly disingenuous. Americans are not the helpless fools the author says we are.
• Rapzid 9y ago
  The biggest shocker is anyone actually believes in "free will" anymore. Although, the desire to limit a particular stimuli's influence over our actions seems valid. In a way, the hyperbolic title seems to be an prime example of its own thesis..
  • freebooter 9y ago
    Freewill exists, but it now comes with a cost. Let me provide a personal anecdote that is happening now with my job: - What with "rising" health care costs, my employer has decided to "force" everyone into getting a series of physical tests, to include those for high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, and a fecal occult blood test. Failure to comply by year's end results in a financial penalty taken from your check twice monthly, totaling $600 annually, rising next year. My wife is also required to submit since she is on my insurance. She and I are both declining. That's $1200 a year in freewill money. - What with, heaven forbid, people having actual rights to use tobacco, be it smoking, vaping, smokeless, whatever, my employer will be conducting cotinine (nicotine) tests. Failure to comply results in a penalty taken from your check twice monthly, totaling $600 annually, rising next year. I will be taking the cotinine test, but then will enjoy nicotine as I am wont to do after passing the test. I'm a social smoker as many are. I don't smoke as a habit, but will not be denied the pleasure should I wish to enjoy it as the mood takes me. The health care/insurance thing is a racket. All they want this info for is to black mark you, identify who the expensive souls will be and keep raising your rates. Insurance companies will eventually sell this data to prospective employers, who won't hire the expensive-to-ensure souls. I can only win by not playing the game. To stay off the radar, I visit the indigent latin clinic and pay cash. I get prescriptions filled at the bodega around the corner. Eventually, the cost will either be extraordinarily high money wise or I will be terminated. My freewill diktats will ensure I will likely go from being a gainfully-employed IT staffer to cutting grass with the illegals at some point. At least I will have by freewill and freedom.
    • annotatedobj 9y ago
      is this in the US? I don't understand how a company is allowed to even think of penalizing employees for not taking physical tests.
• amb23 9y ago
  For anyone interested in diving deeper into this topic, I highly recommend the book "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction" by Matthew Crawford. Of all the books I've read this year, this one has stuck with me the most--it's a fascinating study on the attention environment & its influence on our notions of identity. https://www.amazon.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Distraction/dp/0374535914/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511230579&sr=8-1&keywords=the+world+beyond+your+head https://www.amazon.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Distraction/dp...
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• dqpb 9y ago
  Billboards and all other public-space advertising out in the real world are so much worse than modern digital media. At least when it's confined to a device the user has the ability to turn it off. That said, I do think the end of humanity will be via a primitive AI optimized to hold our attention at all costs. I just don't think we're there yet.
  • TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Billboards can only be targeted to a general area. Digital ads can be targeted to more or less a single person.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    They're differently bad. One might even say that the medium is the message.
• tatotato 9y ago
  Are there any similar articles that are more simply written? I'd like to pass this kind of information on to the people in my life that aren't technically minded. At the moment when I try, I just sound like a conspiracy nut.
• xrd 9y ago
  Everyone on this thread, including me, proves their powerlessness over these sentiments. But, let's still work towards a better world.
• dzink 9y ago
  This is a natural development in the evolution of advertising. The moment a company picks ads as a revenue model is the moment it pivots to become Media. I am building a company that aims to eliminate the need for advertising, and actually save time for its users, instead of making users pay with their time. I lived in an ads-free country for 10 years and saw the tremendous impact advertising had on society when it was finally allowed. I interned at the top Ad firm in the country and had management offers right after college to work in ad agencies, but decided to build things worth advertising instead. Proceeded to work in a top Media firm where advertisers wanted to buy space that was disruptive to users. The system is flawed, but it pays well, because instead of a cut of sales that quantify your performance as a seller, you are making a cut of every seller’s budget competing against other sellers - a reflection of their margin for selling a product. To top it off, you are greatly aided by your inability to sell your customers product to your users - it’s the advertisers fault for not knowing how to target properly, right? That feels like a great gig until you realize that it is corrosive to you as well. Every site that has advertising as a business model, eventually has to de-prioritize user’s needs in favor of those of advertisers to grow bigger. Yahoo became useless; Google results are getting worse, because high placement requires lots of keywords padded with more words, instead of a succinct thorough answer; Facebook is losing the trust of its users who are clicking, not typing to communicate with friends anymore (anecdotal, not empirical); The human brain needs dopamine from progress when it can be productive. Eventually when its productivity is drained it needs to escape with distraction and stories. In between is the need for empathy from other intelligent beings. Faking either of these leads to unhappiness. That is why there is always a solution better than advertising-funded companies of today and that will be the next wave. We are on it.
• kevlar1818 9y ago
  Did anyone else get a pop-up ad when they opened the article? A little on the nose, there, don't ya think, Nautilus?
• Modj 9y ago
  Free will is a big subject, so I'll skip that one, but regardless, we can't escape our cognitive processes. Each new tech revolution has provided new choices and exposed systemic exploitation (printing press, translation of the bible, 30 years war). Often the result was the establishment of new forms of exploitation with more complexity and division while at the same time maintaining the previous form or forms of exploitation for as long as they were useful. For me, the larger problem is not the time associated with attention, nor the exploitation of that time, but exploitation itself. Our attention, wills and... are bound by common factors within separate groups of similar cognitive processes. These groups are formed and formative. I'll cut short here, because I don't want to exploit anyone :-), but it is up to us and them and the others to focus on common factors within different cognitive processes, rather then using the divisive factors in different cognitive processes as a form of control. It seems to me that the amount of time spent, the attention time, is less of a problem than the exploitation of that attention time in the sense that the problem of the shadows on the wall remains anyway, and there are always people who will reject the new shadows for the old ones, and people who will use dubious methods to keep one group staring at these shadows and another group staring at those shadows and another... And the collection plate has always existed, and it will always be passed around. Thing is, the shadows don't care, and the flame keepers, they seem, more often than not, to fall in love with their shadows. Time's up.
• bobbinsbob 9y ago
  I liked this article. It makes me happy I am not really effected by what it is saying. I have no social media, I don't see the point, and I only use whatsapp for family because they won't use signal. WhatsApp has a throwaway number so it doesn't have my actual number and it's permissions are locked down. ublock and umatrix make my browsing experience nice, and less dangerous. Minimal apps on my phone, nearly all Google apps disabled. I would move to a dumb phone if I could find one that allowed whatsapp and sharing it's internet.
• vitro 9y ago
  I suggest consuming media via channels like Blendle - http://blendle.com/ http://blendle.com/ Hand picked articles, pay per view, no distractions. Disclaimer: no affiliation to them, just a happy user.
• tremon 9y ago
  Oh how ironic... Does anyone else get pop-over ads when opening that page?
• erikb 9y ago
  I disagree. Like most things in this world it is a skill question. There's more information of all kind. Good, bad, devilish, spam. And with more comes the requirement that the consumer learns to filter and interact more meaningful with it. The same applies for instance to food as well. We have so much food now that we need to learn to manage eating by willpower, discipline and habits. It also applies to other luxuries. What I can say is that I'm way more educated, way more skilled and way more able to grab a certain subset of knowledge exactly at the time and location that I need it.
• j0nathanB 9y ago
  I discovered that if I use grayscale or if I use darkroom mode, I can actually focus on content and not the bells abd whistles that are designed to hold our attention and keep us engaged longer.
• elijahparker 9y ago
  "One standard I use is GPS. If a GPS distracted us in physical space in the ways that other technologies distract us in informational space, no one would keep using that GPS." Wow, that's a good way to bring the issue to light! How many times have I gone to the internet to look something up (Amazon, perhaps) and got distracted by other things? Although they are a big player in this space, this is why I really like google's homepage compared to (ugh) yahoo or MSN. Nothing trying to distract my attention from why I came there in the first place (initially anyway)
• jononor 9y ago
  Irony: On opening the article, a modal banner about some 'Black Friday' sale popped up.
• lyra_comms 9y ago
  Exactly! As cognitive psychologists, this is what we are trying to fight with Lyra: a nonprofit conversation service which respects attention. www.hellolyra.com/introduction
• SoggyMike 9y ago
  I now leave my laptop at home. I still do some Facebook on my iPhone, but not nearly as much as I did when I had my acer with me. I heartily agree with the article's thesis. If you agree with me, then you will also agree to copy and paste - do not just share - this post to your status.
• AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
  So was the first religion, first temple, first priest, first war lord, first king. May be even first husband and first wife. First Civilization. First and every ever.
• timtas 9y ago
  Ah for the days of 100 million Americans passively accepting Cronkite’s “the way it is” — night after night trusting him to distill the “grand consensus” of the ruling class into a common mythology, a great uniting groupthink. What a comfort it was!