A Small But Growing Group Of Silicon Valley Heretics Are Disconnecting Themselves From the Internet (theguardian.com)

The Guardian reports: Decades after he stayed up all night coding a prototype of what was then called an "awesome" button, Rosenstein belongs to a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called "attention economy": an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy. These refuseniks are rarely founders or chief executives, who have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place. Instead, they tend to have worked a rung or two down the corporate ladder: designers, engineers and product managers who, like Rosenstein, several years ago put in place the building blocks of a digital world from which they are now trying to disentangle themselves. "It is very common," Rosenstein says, "for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences." Rosenstein, who also helped create Gchat during a stint at Google, and now leads a San Francisco-based company that improves office productivity, appears most concerned about the psychological effects on people who, research shows, touch, swipe or tap their phone 2,617 times a day. There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called "continuous partial attention", severely limiting people's ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity -- even when the device is turned off. "Everyone is distracted," Rosenstein says. "All of the time."

Comments

Re:web vs social networks?

[tomxor]

You claim to be a non-social networker, and yet you use GitHub the social network for social coders. You're a real piece of work, liar.

Ouch, that's like calling someone who uses mouthwash an alcoholic. GitHub's is not a true social network, it has messaging to facilitate issues and PRs and at the most "staring" projects, facebook on the other hand is messaging and following and posting self obsession for the pure sake of it.

Re:time to increase brain power

[Penguinisto]

I find it easier to just turn off everything on the weekends, go get stuff done (be it fun, necessary, whatever), and just enjoy being alive. The phone stays in my pocket unless I need to make a call (or get one - and notifications are turned off for anything that doesn't involve me putting the thing against my ear and responding with "hello?")

You should try it sometime. It's pretty fun. So far this year, I've managed to get a garden going, build a greenhouse, partially build a new home office (waiting on the shell to arrive soon), watch the salmon run up the river near my home, read a ton of cool books, meet cool people at various events, go do stuff, go see stuff...

The point here is not to brag - the point is that there is a balance that's needed. There's idle time to fart around with your phone, and there's idle time where you need to rebuild your sense of soul and presence in this world.