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Subtitle: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
'''Subtitle:''' Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
Author: Cal Newport
 
'''Author:''' Cal Newport
 
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=== How I got here? ===
I had 4 messaging apps (with umpteen groups in each), 3 email accounts and 5 social media accounts (maybe more) that continuously put me on a slot machine cycle of constant updates and interruptions. This in addition to the constant noise and visual distraction of an open plan office caused a drastic reduction in productivity. To get anything done, I had to work from home, holed up in a room with the internet turned off, kind of following the principles from Cal Newport's previous book called Deep Work.
 
=== Definition ===
<br />
 
=== The book's premise ===
The book talks a lot about how social media interactions are a large volume of low-value inputs which don't benefit us but the companies that made them which trade in our attention. We should learn to not become fodder to the attention economy but try to leverage the new social media tools to useful ends. A lot of people in the author's experimental group only found about 30 minutes of useful interactions per week on social media. Especially in commercial surveillance capitalist social media, finding useful and relevant information that adds value to our lives is like trawling through garbage to find useful things.
 
 
Interactions with other people in social media and instant messaging services are shallow. They lack the human connection of voice/video calls or face-to-face communications in real life. Even the information we get through the attention-grabbing media like twitter or breaking news is not of high value either for the cost that it demands in terms of our attention and time. You're usually better off getting your news from the next day's newspaper.
 
 
The author looks at the adoption of technology by groups like the Amish who are usually treated by the rest of the developed society as technophobes. The author debunks this myth by citing research of people who spent time with the Amish on how they made their decisions related to technology. One would be surprised to realize that the Amish are not technophobic but very intentional in the use of their technology. They put each technology through a testing phase where they evaluate the pros and cons of using it. Even if the pros are significant, they still evaluate it in terms of how disruptive it might be to the social cohesion of their community. For example, cars and cell phones were avoided, but diapers and chemical fertilizers were adopted by the Amish. The author then cites some examples of non-Amish people who are very intentional in the use of their technology. Some people who don't use smartphones, never had social media accounts etc.
 
 
The like button by Facebook is a convenient tool for their analytics but bad for our interactions. It's one level below text messages (comments in this case). It was marketed as an efficient way of showing your approval for a post, but the efficiency comes at the cost of lowered human interaction.
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Revision as of 09:51, 11 April 2019

Subtitle: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

Author: Cal Newport


How I got here?

I had 4 messaging apps (with umpteen groups in each), 3 email accounts and 5 social media accounts (maybe more) that continuously put me on a slot machine cycle of constant updates and interruptions. This in addition to the constant noise and visual distraction of an open plan office caused a drastic reduction in productivity. To get anything done, I had to work from home, holed up in a room with the internet turned off, kind of following the principles from Cal Newport's previous book called Deep Work.

Definition


The book's premise

The book talks a lot about how social media interactions are a large volume of low-value inputs which don't benefit us but the companies that made them which trade in our attention. We should learn to not become fodder to the attention economy but try to leverage the new social media tools to useful ends. A lot of people in the author's experimental group only found about 30 minutes of useful interactions per week on social media. Especially in commercial surveillance capitalist social media, finding useful and relevant information that adds value to our lives is like trawling through garbage to find useful things.


Interactions with other people in social media and instant messaging services are shallow. They lack the human connection of voice/video calls or face-to-face communications in real life. Even the information we get through the attention-grabbing media like twitter or breaking news is not of high value either for the cost that it demands in terms of our attention and time. You're usually better off getting your news from the next day's newspaper.


The author looks at the adoption of technology by groups like the Amish who are usually treated by the rest of the developed society as technophobes. The author debunks this myth by citing research of people who spent time with the Amish on how they made their decisions related to technology. One would be surprised to realize that the Amish are not technophobic but very intentional in the use of their technology. They put each technology through a testing phase where they evaluate the pros and cons of using it. Even if the pros are significant, they still evaluate it in terms of how disruptive it might be to the social cohesion of their community. For example, cars and cell phones were avoided, but diapers and chemical fertilizers were adopted by the Amish. The author then cites some examples of non-Amish people who are very intentional in the use of their technology. Some people who don't use smartphones, never had social media accounts etc.


The like button by Facebook is a convenient tool for their analytics but bad for our interactions. It's one level below text messages (comments in this case). It was marketed as an efficient way of showing your approval for a post, but the efficiency comes at the cost of lowered human interaction.