The Perils of Peak Attention

I've been experimenting with using my phone as little as possible. When I'm out, I put it in my backpack or pocket on silent. At the very most, I'll use it for music. I try really hard to not pull it out to check HN or others when I'm bored. I also now check Twitter at most twice a week, for less than twenty minutes.

It's too early to be confident in the results, but I do feel more "peaceful" and able to focus, if that makes sense. I'm trying to extend this to my computer and not get distracted by opening up new tabs every time I get a break from thinking or coding.

For those interested, the inspiration for this experiment was Cal Newport's book "Deep Work".

The chief concern I have about being "submerged under the waves" of the 'net, as this article puts it, is that we will lose the lone creative genius.

Hard to have a lot of truly original thoughts when you spend every waking moment chatting with someone, instagramming everything you experience etc.

Design by committee is frequently inferior to having one expert with a strong vision sit down in relative isolation and create. But it's getting harder and harder to be isolated. We're raising an entire generation that doesn't even understand the virtue of that concept.

In a world where your Rushkoffs[1] go unread, we are spiraling into some sort of local maxima where social media is realized for what it is, and the problems associated with social media are epidemic.

The crux of the issue lies in the fact that nobody knows what social media is, or indeed cyber. "Cyber" as it stands now is some far off place, in a William Gibson fantasy, but infact operates in the world seemingly un-noticed by the smartphone equipped masses.

As I said; it's not long until people realize they've been played and their eyeball hours and data exhausts are being sold to the highest bidder for hard cash. It makes me wonder why smartphones even cost so much. Surely they should be 'free' given how much data can be gleaned from a smartphone owner?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Rushkoff

Great read. I often compensate in life by turning up the intensity, finding new things to interest me, etc. So, it's refreshing to hear a justification for learning to enjoy moments of thoughtlessness and solitude when they come about.