In contrast, our current digital interface—defined as it is by the extraction, circulation, and consumption of virtual experiences—is at once information-rich and experience-poor. The compulsion to participate in it comes about not through external coercion but through the open-ended gratification of small choices that come to feel authentically ou... See more

So long as the appeal of digital services consists of the quantified reification of identity and the provision of anxious satisfactions, it will continue to obscure questions about the quality of our material lives. We should work to cut these services down or out entirely.

Questions of attention do not concern something numinous and ineffable; they are about the texture and quality of our material experience—and whether we can work to free ourselves from the quagmire of consumption, performance, and sensational reaction that forms our digital environment.