The Attention Arms Race

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google have produced amazing products that have benefited the world enormously. But these companies are also caught in a zero-sum race for our finite attention, which they need to make money. Constantly forced to outperform their competitors, they must use increasingly persuasive techniques to keep us glued. They point AI-driven news feeds, content, and notifications at our minds, continually learning how to hook us more deeply—from our own behavior. Unfortuna...

 Knowledge Replaced with Social Media

When it emerged towards the end of the 80s as a purely text-based medium, [the internet] was seen as a tool to pursue knowledge, not pleasure. Reason and thought were most valued in this garden—all derived from the project of Enlightenment. Universities around the world were among the first to connect to this new medium, which hosted discussion groups, informative personal or group blogs, electronic magazines, and academic mailing lists and forums. It was an intellectual project, not about ...

 The Web Enslaves Us With Convenience

In The Matrix, Neo learns that humanity is enslaved by machines. The populace “lives” in a virtual world, unaware that their body heat is being used as an energy source. I see a sort of low-fi parallel of this in our relationship with Facebook. Every member operates in that “free” forum, largely unaware that they’re powering the thing by relinquishing their user data. This scenario is in stark contrast to what we once hoped the web to be. We imagined it as a means of liberating peo...

 The Implications of a Facebook Bankruptcy

One reason companies like Facebook should be interested in what I am proposing is that planning a regulation regime is better than morphing involuntarily into a dull regulated utility, which is what would probably happen otherwise. Suppose Facebook never gets good enough at snatching the “advertising” business from Google. That’s still a possibility as I write this. In that event, Facebook could go into decline, which would present a global emergency. It’s not an outlandish scenario....

 Using Google is Like Watching Fox News or MSNBC

That's something I picked up in science, I suppose -- wanting to know the other side of the story, testing one's ideas against the alternative. Of course, one is naturally predisposed to what one already believes. Early nurturing and education is not to be discounted. One might even have a genetic nudge toward liberality or conservatism. Still, it behooves one to approach alternative views with an open mind, or at least as open as one can manage. [...] And now I read Sue Halpern reviewing ...