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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."
Sometimes you have to take responsibility for your actions, regardless of the original intent, even if your efforts are futile.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
technology is contributing toward so-called "continuous partial attention", severely limiting people's ability to focus
Of course, the noisy, crowded, attention-impossible "collaborative" open office trend is just fine.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Isn't this more a problem with social networks? I know browsing the web more generally can be addictive for some, but I feel like there is a distinction.
I don't do the normal social network, no facebook, no twitter etc, I went down that road for a very short time and found the overall effect fairly negative and attention graby many years before it became news. I don't find my life very distracted as a non-social networker, I don't have a smart phone, and the closest I get to distracted is emails or pull requests on GitHub (which are periodic, not continuous).
Does anyone have examples of "highly distracted" experiences outside of social networking on the web?
As usual, the right reaction isn't to shun new things, but to learn how to use them correctly. You can have a phone and not touch, tap and swipe all the time. You can have a Facebook account and not be constantly interrupted by notifications. And if you can't, then that's what you need to fix.
There's a lot of us who are disengaging from this BS level of connectivity, don't care about smart phones, and refuse to be tethered, tweeted at, and constantly checking our email.
I've had managers who can't put down their phone for two minutes, they call a meeting so we can explain something to them, and check their email so often they keep saying "what? sorry, I missed that" and you have to repeat what you said.
I now have a hard limit of two of those before I leave the meeting. If you aren't capable of listening, then I'm not going to bother trying. If you can put your phone down long enough, great, I'll happily explain it to you .. otherwise I'll send your ADD ass an email and you can stop wasting my time trying to have an in person meeting with you while you're doing everything but paying attention. It's a waste of everybody's time in a meeting when half of the people are looking at 5 other things.
And I'm not wasting my time if you have the attention span of a 6 year old or can only digest information in tweet sized chunks.
Maybe this is an age thing, those of us who remember BBS's, IRC, and usenet are no longer quite so enthralled with the shiny baubles, and we want to get our damned work done.
When work day is done, my phone stays in my laptop bag, or on the desk of my home office. I may periodically bring it with me if something specific is happening, but otherwise I'm not interested in being leashed to my email 24x7, I'm not checking my email constantly once the work day is done. And I sure as hell don't want a twitter feed, and endless stream of texts, or some stupid game which feels it must alert me every two minutes to be sure I'm playing (you know, seeing ads and spending money).
You kids should try it, walking away from technology and not being constantly harassed by beeping phones is much more relaxing, and a whole lot healthier than jumping at your phone in the hopes that something awesome is about to unfold.
People are like crack junkies with their phone, twitching and jonesing for the next time it goes ping. No thanks, not interested.
I'm no luddite, I've been in the tech industry for a few decades, and I'm currently surrounded by 5 LCD displays all over 22", plus two phones. And like most people who have, the immediacy of the cool technology has lost its luster.
But when I walk away from this heap of technology which surrounds me, I don't give it a second thought.
I strongly believe that programmer productivity today is less than it was decades ago, partly a result of distraction and the inability to think deeply, and partly due to the poor quality of todayâ(TM)s tools and tool documentation. It is hard to measure programmer productivity, but I recall that when I worked on a DevOps team a few years back, there were things that should have taken minutes to do that I spent days on, âoebanging my head against a wallâ - because the tool did not work as advertised, or the API I wanted to use was poorly documented, and so I had to resort to trial and error. In addition, I recall that while I enjoyed working in an open room, I would often stop thinking and just stare at my screen, waiting for a nearby conversation to conclude. When I had to think deeply, I found that I could not - and so I would go home, do the deep thinking, and then return to the office the next day to code it up. I found that coding did not require deep thinking as long as the problem was "obvious", but if it was complex, I could not do it effectively in the open room. As for email, I learned long ago that I need to close my email program while I am working, and only check it at intervals. As for the phone, I don't use the phone that much - I am in the "older generation" and did not pick up the habit of always looking at it, and I discourage people from texting me, because I find that texting - which is pre-emptive - is very disruptive to deep thought.
I'm calling BULLSHIT on this claim.
Gee, if only there was a "Do-Not-Disturb" on my phone -- oh wait, there is!
Moreover, just because more and more people can't focus on something longer then 10 seconds doesn't imply _everyone_ is this neurotic.
Hmm, if only there was a word for this ... I guess no one remembers the term: Self-Discipline
> swipe or tap their phone 2,617 times a day.
Holy shit are these people insecure and slaves to their addictions. Let me guess, this is because of "Social Media."
Guess what, you have a CHOICE. Start living your own life instead of following someone's virtual life.
You can still have an "online" presence and live a balanced life.
i.e.
Check your email / facebook / etc. 3 times a day -- morning, noon, and evening.
Anything more then 3-7 times a day and you probably should seek professional help.
I do. As far as digital content and connectivity goes, we live in a world of abundance. Today true wealth lies in focus. And today, disconnecting from always-online can provide that to a very high degree, much better than trying to discipline yourself. Every time upgrading my smartphone is due, I think about going back to a feature phone and a paper calendar / filofax.
I never really dug the Internet in whole. This always-online thing was suspicious to me back in the 90ies and - to a certain extent - still is today. I remember the Fidonet and pulling/pushing my stuff once a day. Perfect.
Long story short, disconnecting is a good idea and I understand that for some only a radical move does the trick. I could be that one.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca