Saved by sari
How to quit Facebook without quitting Facebook
sari and added
By portraying our opponents as beyond persuasion, social media sorts us into ever more hostile tribes, then rewards us, with likes and shares, for the most hyperbolic denunciations of the other side, fuelling a vicious cycle that makes sane debate impossible. We mustn’t let Silicon Valley off the hook, but we should be honest: much of the time... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Alex Wittenberg and added
if I wanted to use the web in a personal way, it seemed better to do so through social media. But this felt like a job too! Everything in social media is explicitly quantified with likes and shares and retweets. All the platforms have a notification bar to show you which random utterance of yours was gaining in popularity, implying that you could r... See more
introduction
In a 2017 interview, Ev Williams (the founder of Twitter), said something that has stuck with me since: “the trouble with algorithms, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it trie... See more
sari azout • My Favorite Questions
Shachaf Rodberg and added
You might also be aware that all this is delivered by means of “persuasive design”—an umbrella term for an armory of psychological techniques borrowed directly from the designers of casino slot machines, for the express purpose of encouraging compulsive behavior. One example among hundreds is the ubiquitous drag-down-to-refresh gesture, which keeps... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Alex Wittenberg and added
Shuya Gong added
Occupying the “third space” withing the attention economy is important not just because, as I’ve argued, individual attention forms the basis for collective attention and thus for meaningful refusal of all kinds. It is also important because in a time of shrinking margins, when not only students but everyone else has “put the pedal to the metal,” and cannot afford other kinds of refusal, attention may be the last resource we have left to withdraw. In a cycle where both financially driven platforms and overall precarity close down the space of attention—the very attention need to resist this onslaught, which them pushes further—it may be only in the space of our own minds that some of us can begin to pull apart the links.
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
The internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was outrage... See more
Drew Austin • It's Time to Lie Down and Be Counted
In How to Do Nothing (Jenny Odell) made the case for retreat or refusal as an act of resistance to capitalist productivity and commodified attention. She laid out a plan for “hold[ing] open a contemplative space against the pressures of habit, familiarity, and distraction that constantly threaten to close it.”
Shannon Mattern • How to Map Nothing
Keely Adler added