The State of the Culture, 2024
The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction . Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.
Ted Gioia • The State of the Culture, 2024
The consequence of our content-addicted culture is non-stop diversion from having to come to grips with the big questions of reality, of life. The American social scientist Herbert Simon wrote: “The wealth of information means a dearth of something else—a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvi... See more
Luke Burgis • The Case for Silence
Quote from The State of Culture (by Ted Gioia), resurfaced to me by Salman:
"The tech platforms aren't like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don't want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers. Addiction is the goal."
We’re lost in the garden of forking memes, and the idea of linear progress along a single historical time line seems like a quaint artifact from a much simpler era. Grand visions of the future are few and far between; the pop cultural landscape is littered with post-apocalyptic dystopias. If we want to make sense of how we got here, we have to unde... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
Our feeds are designed to “prod the would-be attender ever onward from one monetizable object to the next,” he writes. This has had a deadening effect on all kinds of culture, from Marvel blockbusters that optimize for attention minute to minute, to automated Spotify recommendations that push one similar song after another.
Kyle Chayka • How the Internet Turned Us Into Content Machines
This cult of distraction, as Rojek points out, masks the real disintegration of culture. It conceals the meaninglessness and emptiness of our own lives. It seduces us to engage in imitative consumption. It deflects the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing inequalities, costly imperial wars, economic collapse, and politica
... See moreChris Hedges • Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
the root causes of, essentially, an economy built on capturing as much of our attention and leisure time as possible.