Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
And at the same time, I think that the group of people who, by luck or by temperament, proved very, very good at using the internet, to some degree, distracts from the many, many, many people for whom the internet is fundamentally a distraction machine, or for whom the internet is creating, because of what we built on it. You know, shorter attentio... See more
Ezra Klein • Opinion | We Know Shockingly Little About What Makes Humanity Prosper
In fact, you could design it with the opposite goal: to maximally respect people’s need for sustained attention, and to interrupt them as little as possible.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
Sherry Turkle made a provocative observation in her 2016 book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. She claimed that it takes seven minutes for a conversation to really get good. In those first seven minutes, participants are mostly giving standard answers to one another’s questions. However engagened and genuine they may be,... See more
Recalling the specifics now, I can see more clearly exactly what’s being lost. Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting.