For several years now, I've been developing a growing discomfort with a philosophy of relating to technology I call  Waldenponding  (after Thoreau's Walden Pond experiment on which  Walden  is based). The crude caricature is "smash your smart phone and go live in a log cabin to reclaim your attention and your life from being ha

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The primary modern manifestation is what I’ve previously labeled waldenponding — a fearful retreat from the technologically mediated modes of rich connection that would enable such maximal collectivization. The fetish object of the waldenponder is the individual brain doing “deep” work, with minimal collectivization, and maximal egoism.