Error | Harvard University Press

Like New York, the internet never arrests its massive sprawl. Instead, it exists as complex adaptive system that renders senses overworked and synapses under-rested.To open any app is to wade into frenzied maelstrom whipped by gale-force winds. Whether requests, reminders, or retweets, waves and winds alike pummel your attention as you try your bes... See more

The massive behavioral conditioning we’ve all been undergoing since the advent of ubiquitous electronic communications technology has changed us radically. But this dramatic, if not epochal, change is underappreciated. It’s underappreciated because we’re living in it as it happens, like frogs in cold water that slowly gets heated up without the fro

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Our most advanced technologies are not enhancing our connectivity, but thwarting it. They are replacing and devaluing our humanity, and—in many different ways—undermining our respect for one another and ourselves. Sadly, this has been by design. But that’s also why it can be reversed.

In so many ways to live in 2024 is to be subject to a constant and all-out assault on our attention . It’s the ability to attend to anything — a book, another person, ourselves — that is being eroded. I’m increasingly convinced, then, that the next big vector for inequality is around this most fundamental of human capabilities. The elites are going... See more

What good is it to have all of the world’s knowledge at your fingertips if you don’t have the bandwidth to prioritize it, or the expertise to know if it is competent? At one time we had a scarcity of information, but today our attention is in the midst of a massive DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack.

Whether or not our collective attention spans are shrinking is up for debate, as is the notion that this is destructive to our minds and relationships. What doesn't appear to be up for debate is that the crux of this issue lies in our relationship with technology, particularly networking technologies.