Happy Nice Mall

The other thing is that it has given us this dystopian vision of the future. Naomi Klein argues We have suddenly crashed to the point where we will be in 15 years in terms of technology. He showed us a vision of the future that most of us hate. In the last two years, “Hurray, another Zoom call!” I haven’t even heard the expression once. So it gave us a vision of the future we are moving forward, in which we can now consciously choose to give up and move forward towards a much better future.

On this subject: There are, author and technologist Nir EyalThose who say we should be individually responsible for our own discipline for screen time rather than blaming technology for our distractions. You call it “brutal optimism,” which you describe as a solution that sounds good but won’t work.

JH: At the beginning of my book research, I had essentially two stories of what had happened to me. I thought: “One, you lack the will. Second, someone invented the smartphone.” I decided to use my willpower and left without my smartphone for three months. In a radical act of will, I spent three months completely offline in Provincetown, Mass. There were many ups and downs, but I was surprised at how much my attention returned. I can read eight hours a day. At the end of my time there, I thought, “I will never go back to what I experienced before.” The pleasures of being focused are far greater than the rewards of likes and retweets.

Then I got my phone back and within a few months I was 80 percent back to where I was. I only understood why when I was interviewed. James Williams“As if you thought the solution to air pollution was to personally wear a gas mask,” said the person I would now claim to be the world’s leading philosopher of interest.

I am not against gas masks. Gas masks are great. But they are not the solution to air pollution.

If quitting technology for a long time isn’t the answer, what were some of the techniques you found effective on an individual level?

JH: I sleep at least eight more hours. I have a time-locked container where I put my phone four hours a day while typing. And I’m not going to sit down and watch a movie with my boyfriend unless we both lock our phones.

There are people who argue that worrying about Big Tech’s impact on our attention is the latest moral panic, akin to the anger that greeted the print shop. How do you react when you hear this argument?