So what’s the solution? We need a great artificial intelligence effort to comb through our information, assess the urgency and relevance, and use a deep knowled

So what’s the solution? We need a great artificial intelligence effort to comb through our information, assess the urgency and relevance, and use a deep knowledge of who we are and what we think is important to deliver the right notifications at the right time. I believe the answer to this question is far, far simpler. The problem started in the second paragraph. ... MLB.com At Bat apparently deemed this important enough to broadcast to hundreds of thousand of users who had earlier clicked, with hardly a second thought, on a dialogue box asking if they wanted to receive notifications from Major League Baseball. MLB.com decided nothing. They asked if they could send messages. The author decided that anything MLB.com At Bat wanted to send him was important enough to interrupt, as he puts it, "enduring a meeting, playing basketball, presenting to a book club, daydreaming, watching a movie, enjoying a family meal, painting their masterpiece, proposing marriage, interviewing a job candidate, having sex, ...". "MLB.com At Bat would like to send you notifications (Yes / No)" is pretty clear and to the point. They want to message you. If you want to be messaged, click yes. Sure, app operators can be reckless and bad citizens, but the ultimate control is in your hands. That last push notification giving you permission-granting-remorse? It's trivial to disable notifications on a per-app basis, or even restrict them to something non-intrusive. There is no notification alert crisis. Apple and the other smart watch makers are not releasing wrist-mounted spam machines. You will be able to choose who you trust to interrupt you, and you will have decently granular controls over how these notifications present themselves. It is up to you to decide who to trust with the ability to grab your attention at any moment. If you place that trust poorly you have the ability to revoke that grant at any time. Personally I feel like I have a lot of control over how distracting my mobile device is. I only allow alerts from Hangouts, iMessage, Slack, AlienBlue, and whatever turn-based game I'm playing at the moment. These are apps where I'm interacting with another human, where the notification will probably get me to interact with the individual. I restrict or deny notification permissions for every other app. Rarely do I press "Yes" to the request for notifications. When I do, at the first breach of trust that app gets permissions removed. Uber is a good example, I granted notifications thinking it would be nice to not watch the map when waiting for a car. Uber took the opportunity to send me a push advertisement for some weekend rate thing, so now Uber can never message me for anything. Map watching isn't very onerous, still better than waiting for a cab to show up, so I'll deal.