I sat stunned watching Donald Trump’s acceptance speech on Friday. A rambling, unstructured, but terrifyingly dark view of America. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it – as Nate Silver says, it will be the reason he loses by 15 points or goes on to win. The unrelenting bleakness and anger made me ask myself, what narrative is … Read More
Amusing ourselves to death – Part two
This is the second post in a two part series on Neil Postman’s 1985 book “Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business” . The first part is here. This week’s post is also the final in the series on how technology “hijacks our minds” (to quote Google’s Tristan Harris), which I started a few weeks ago. You can … Read More
Amusing ourselves to death – Part one
This is the first of a two part final in a series on how technology “hijacks our minds” (to quote Google’s Tristan Harris). You can read the first post in the series here. The last few posts have looked at: How dopamine acts on our brains every time we get a Facebook like or an email update the same way it acts on … Read More
Overcome information overload by tuning the signal to noise ratio
Two weeks ago I talked about information overload and suggested a model to explain it: The model shows two drivers of information overload: The sheer volume of information hitting you. The narrowing of your “processing funnel” due to the fatigue caused by having to deal with this information. In other words, a vicious circle starts to operate where more and … Read More
#Beleave – Did social media win it for the Leave campaign?
I’ve suspended the series of posts on how technology hijacks our minds for this week, to focus on the Leave win in the UK’s EU referendum. I want to ask whether the Leave campaign won the social media battle and therefore the referendum war. Leave won on Facebook The New York Times has an interesting piece on how the Leave … Read More
The dynamic at the heart of information overload
This is the fourth part in a series on how technology “hijacks our minds” (to quote Google’s Tristan Harris). You can read part one of the series here. The last three blogs have looked at: How dopamine acts on our brains every time we get a Facebook like or an email update the same way it acts on the brain … Read More
How to stay focused by stopping self-interruptions
This is the third part in a series on how technology “hijacks our minds” (to quote Google’s Tristan Harris). You can read part one of the series here. The last two blog posts have focused on how technology can distract and interrupt us. We’ve looked at two key mechanisms: The strong reinforcing effects from social media in particular – where Facebook … Read More
We live in an “ecosystem of interruption technologies”
This is the second part in a series on how technology “hijacks our minds” (to quote Google’s Tristan Harris). You can read part one of the series here. Nicholas Carr, in his fantastic 2010 book The Shallows, describes turning on a computer today as plunging into an “ecosystem of interruption technologies” (p91). Today’s computers and mobile devices play on two deeply embedded vulnerabilities … Read More
Why we adore the technologies that undo our capacities to think
A client sent me a great article this week on how technology is intentionally designed to capture our attention, interrupt our work, and consume our time. The article is by Tristan Harris, a Google “Design Ethics and Product Philosopher” (whatever the heck that job is, I mean, really…). Anyway, the article served to crystallise a lot of my recent thinking, … Read More
Do we overestimate AI because we underestimate humanity?
On my dark days I’m in the “AI is an existential threat to humanity” camp. That’s a camp with a whole lot of pedigree. Think Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and now, perhaps, even Tim Ferriss (if his recent musings on Freakonomics are anything to go by). The Terminator movies and TV series are the most enduring telling of this … Read More