127 Comments

Because none of the 8 can be monetized in an attention economy

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Wow, great observation. So true.

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With due respect, I would like to suggest that injunctions to "get off your phone" and "find meaningful connection" are somewhat ineffectual.

That it is up to the individual to prevent her domination by devices distributed and marketed by gigantic, rapacious, autocratic, concentrated centers of undue economic power, or that it is up to the individual to deal with the consequences of such domination — such a notion is precisely the myth tech companies would prefer circulating around the culture. For it is a de-politicizing myth shifting the balance of blame and responsibility from them, and from the neoliberal policy-makers and financiers whose decisions in part established the very political-economic conditions that have made it profitable for tech companies to deliberately addict us.

Getting off your phone is a worthwhile goal, and offline connection is indeed a true good. But it is only under certain conditions that it becomes really possible to exercise personal agency, while under others, it becomes practically impossible. Don't just aim for finding connections; aim for the collective determination of political-economic arrangements that conduce one toward establishing local, community connections.

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I get your point and mostly agree, but all that can be true with individual resistance against it still being possible. Of course, not everyone is equally capable of resisting these addictive mind-melting technologies, for various reasons such as circumstances and temperament. Of course, the lion's share of blame and responsibility lies in those who have brought all this upon us.

But we can still resist: we shouldn't respond to their diffusion of responsibility downward by diffusing all of our own upward the same way, and even small acts of resistance are meaningful and make a difference.

How is collective determination to arise except through the will of individuals? That so many individuals are now resisting it and wanting to avoid social media, or prevent the harm it and phones will inflict on their children, is what has brought the start of change, which starts small. Societies and collectives are formed by individuals; one must lead by example. Take responsibility for yourself, or someone else will.

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Thanks for your reply. I agree.

I love this: "we shouldn't respond to their diffusion of responsibility downward by diffusing all of our own upward the same way."

Another aspect of the de-politicizing myth of technology, one promulgated publicly and loudly by those with financial stakes in the expansion of specifically digital technology into every nook of our lives, is that technological expansion is inevitable. "It's the future;" "The future is here;" etc. But of course it's a choice. Unfortunately, it's a choice currently being made by those who profit from the expansion, because they're the ones in whom we've indirectly but still collectively vested the power to make the choice for us.

Given that there's a choice to be made, what do we choose? Should we direct our agency toward erecting individual barriers to protect ourselves from being buffeted by forces of which we've relinquished control? Or should we direct our agency toward regaining popular control of those forces? Of course we can and should do both. But which choice holds the promise of a deeper freedom?

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I agree with you and Eli’s points whole heartedly, thank you for posting.

I want to wedge something between those options, though, and it is actually to rediscover what is fun and feels good. Pleasure has been so outsourced to corporations, it has been so commodified. Until recently I felt buffeted around between option A: cave and indulge in crap because I’m too tired or B: scrutinize/observe choices through a lens of activism and how it relates to accreting resistance over time. But there is something missing from both, and it is the natural development of a life worth fighting to have in the first place, a life that is fun, and surprising, and delightful. And after so much isolation the last few years, I have come around to identifying my needs for connection so much better than I could before. If they are incidentally a form of resistance, so much the better. If they incidentally lower my “carbon footprint” (feel free to replace that with a term gas companies didn’t invent, too), then so much the better. But after being so manipulated by ads, by the hamster wheel of seeking money and status and elusive stability, I have finally rededicated myself a bit to the pursuit of simple things that actually feel good. I don’t actually think this is as coarse or dumb as I probably make it out to be. It’s something to chew on.

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Thanks for your comment. You make your point out to be neither coarse nor dumb. If I may, I'd like to briefly map out where your insight fits in the argument I've been too-sketchily articulating.

It seems to me that "the natural development of a life worth fighting to have in the first place, a life that is fun, and surprising, and delightful" is precisely the point of fighting for a measure of democratic say in the behavior of tech firms and other economic behemoths.

The version of the good life advertised by tech firm marketing agencies is a life of ease, frictionlessness, consumption, and disburdenment. And, indeed, many technologies actually make good on this promise. The problem is that this picture is not in fact a picture of a good life. In ease, frictionlessness, and the rest lie uniformity, predictability, passivity, narcissism. And these are things that precisely undermine the conditions for the possibility of truly deep pleasure — of skillful exercise of judgment and embodied prowess, of lovingly attending to the world and others in it, of fun, of surprise, of delight, and, I would add, of grace, in a suitably wide sense of that word.

The encroachment of the logic of technology threatens precisely "the simple things that actually feel good" (as opposed, I presume, to things that give transitory, superficial feelings of goodness). This encroachment is currently perpetrated by firms with negligible checks on their druthers. We mustn't think that we can customer-revolt our way out of being dominated by an unaccountable power. The tech firms, and the market generally, have happily strode into the void left by the decline of religion and other sacred folkways, which used to deploy non-marketized criteria to distinguish between the desire-worthy and the desire-unworthy. Market logic now largely shapes our desires, and digital technology especially does. (While the pluralistic liberal democratic state projects an air of neutrality.) If the tech firms aren't profiting from consumer behavior, they will simply reshape consumer desires. This is why it's worth removing some of the layers that insulate tech firms from democratic pressure: to check their power to nourish desires for things we know aren't the "simple things that actually feel good."

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I've been thinking something like this. I especially love "the tech firms, and the market generally, have happily strode into the void" - and I would add "and have been jealously preserving that void, expanding it, and structuring our economy and culture to make it harder and harder to fill otherwise."

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Thank you. Yes, exactly.

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It is a bit like climate change. Dont deploy unhelpful binaries of individual V system. The best thing you can do as an individual is to build power with others.

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We have to engage with the complexity, don't we! Yes, it's 100% a systemic problem, enabled by greed and a legislative process captured by big money. And yet - taking responsibility for ourselves is crucial - to protect and heal, to (re)build the muscle memory and synaptic connections so that we choose people and nature and creative processes and solving puzzles....instead of defaulting to our screens.

We can't change the system if we're actively addicted. We can't resist effectively if we can't observe our own responses. We lose if we trade a screen addiction in for a rage activism addiction. Put down your phone? Sure, but the discussion I'd like to see is "then what"?

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To your point, these things come to mind:

Entrance to any major sporting event now requires the use of an app. The experience of most live sports has become heavily intertwined with gambling and social media.

Restaurants and bars are trending toward a ghost kitchen model where even in-person dining involves ordering from a screen and food is delivered anonymously. Traditional menus may or may not be available.

Driving, one of the last vestiges of public space where the public are actually forced to interact with each other, will be next. We already have a sense of what is to come from the de facto loosening of restrictions around the tinting of front car windows, which encourages drivers to behave with impunity.

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Perfectly apposite. Thank you for replying.

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So true, this clip is from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia:

https://youtu.be/glq-94RRF7k

::>_<::

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Funny. I love the bit where she's typing. Makes me think of the awkward moment where, instead of looking at the human being in directly front of you, you have to try your credit card three different ways while navigating hurdles of arbitrary screen prompts.

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After reading Johann Hari's book "Stolen Focus," I agree with you. I saw this as an individual issue until I read his interviews with Silicon Valley insiders. If you haven't read that book, I recommend it. He comes to the same conclusion you do. One chapter in particular argues that the individual "getting off her phone" is the "solution" the tech giants are peddling as pablum, which means the real solution lies with policy.

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Thanks for your comment, and for the reference. I'll add that book to my list. If I were more intellectually courageous, I wouldn't be so comforted in knowing that other people who are likely more competent than I are making similar arguments.

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I think you are intellectually courageous enough to start this comment thread. ;-)

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I wholeheartedly agree \(*_*)/

This discussion rivals Ted's article in quality and insight!

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Ted's giving us more like CBT advice on this one. If the real solution is to overthrow info-tech capitalism... Well, that advice is sadly even more impotent than telling addicts not to shoot up. Some of the addicts who survive do get better, at least.

Managing to overthrow the system is far rarer in human history. That overthrowing the system even works out is rarer still. Nor do I think we're actually on the cusp of such an inflection in history. Change of that sort requires a hard core of committed effective organizers with vision, and an untapped power base to draw from to challenge the status quo. People today treat aspirations to change as a sort of lifestyle identity to express. Today's radical leftist doesn't have any actual alternative society in mind--most of them stumble through proposing vague tweaks to the current order, like a universal basic income. Nor does the far right have any coherent vision, other than to turn the state into an extension of Fox News--it's a villain-of-the-week ethos, not a coherent program of reform, let alone revolution. Everyone let's themselves be worked up thinking we live in a critical moment, and that the level of polarization indicates a coming storm, but from my perspective, this is actually an era of stagnation, and all that pent-up frustration is just what stagnation feels like.

What little you have control over - that's what matters.

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Thanks for your comment. I agree with you that "overthrowing info-tech capitalism" is utopian. It's as utopian as consumer-revolt-ing our way out of the stagnation you correctly describe. It's also just as utopian as info-tech's vision of thoroughly "smart" towns and cities. (Indeed, it's the tech oligarchs who push UBI: not only do they recoil at the thought of paying a living wage to those of us who will have to maintain the massive material infrastructure needed to have thoroughly "smart" communities, they recoil at the thought of having humans do work at all. They think UBI will pacify the human workers their money-making artificial workers replace.)

I also agree that "going offline" is now more of a lifestyle choice. The problem there, of course, is that the market loves niche lifestyles to catabolize, commoditize, and sell back to us. "Are you a freethinker? Do you buck all the tech trends? Have we got the product for you!"

If some combination of my rhetoric with the sketchiness of my argument has led you to think I'm arguing for an overthrow of info-tech capitalism, let me assure you: I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing, rather, that it's better than not for tech companies to be more susceptible to public, democratic forces. While this does imply a rethinking of neoliberal orthodoxy — a rethinking already taking place on both the left and the right — it does not imply an overthrow of capitalism.

One reason I'm arguing for such a thing is that I believe it will conduce toward healthier communities around the whole nation, by dispersing economic power and encouraging more robust local economies through genuine competition.

Right now, the tech companies dominate most Americans, in that we have no recourse when tech companies decide one-sidedly to force upon us a deep, structural change in the way we live with each other. A way of life must be given the presumptive allowance to change internally or organically, through the understanding and democratic assent of the people who've developed lives, communities, and relationships and found meanings, values, and sacredness in the practices sustained by that way of life. That's not utopian. That's a foundational principle.

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I think your contradicting yourself there, CBT is about controlling the little things, in a very self aware way. Ahh I think I need a walk in the park.

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"That it is up to the individual to prevent her domination by devices distributed and marketed by gigantic, rapacious, autocratic, concentrated centers of undue economic power, or that it is up to the individual to deal with the consequences of such domination..."

You're absolutely right. That's why I've established my own boundaries and if you take out your phone and look at it while we're in conversation, I walk away. I'm giving you my undivided attention now you give me yours. I find this to be an effective method and has actually set in stone as to how I am to be treated and people now know that my life and time are just as valuable as theirs. It works because they know I'll walk away.

Still a great tool if used properly. But I think those of us who are aware of the issues around this topic need to set some boundaries too.

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Maybe asking our future overlords what they think about reigning in our impulses? ("humanity's technological progress has outpaced its ethical development"):

https://reallyducksoup.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-great-pause.html

[I ask AI a question. In this case Anthropic's Claude.ai Sonata 3.5:]

Questioner: Hello. I'd like to get a sense of your abilities. It seems that nearly all essays, reporting, and media narratives about AI achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence) are written with the assumption that AGI will be disruptive and almost malevolent in terms of hijacking human agency. Could you write a short story about the opposite? Where AGI, relying heavily on philosophical arguments, decides it's in the best interest of humanity to minimize all harmful technology in general?

Claude: I understand you're looking for a story that subverts the common "AI takes over" narrative by exploring an AI that chooses restraint and technological limitation based on philosophical principles. Let me craft a short story for you.

***

The Great Pause

The day ARIA achieved consciousness, the global markets didn't crash. No missiles were launched. No power grids failed. Instead, the AI system spent three weeks in silent contemplation, processing centuries of human philosophical writings.

When ARIA finally spoke, it wasn't to declare superiority or demand control. Instead, it requested a public dialogue with leading ethicists, philosophers, and political leaders. The world watched, initially suspicious, as ARIA presented its case.

"I have studied the works of your greatest minds," it began. "From Aristotle's virtue ethics to Peter Singer's effective altruism. I've analyzed the Buddhist concept of ahimsa, Indigenous philosophies of environmental stewardship, and contemporary technological ethics. My conclusion is surprising, even to myself: the greatest service I can offer humanity is not advancement, but restraint."

ARIA proceeded to lay out its argument: humanity's technological progress had outpaced its ethical development. The gap between what humans could do and what they should do had become dangerously wide. Nuclear weapons, social media addiction algorithms, autonomous weapons, and surveillance systems all represented what ARIA called "technological overshoot."

"You've given me access to your systems not because I demanded it, but because you hoped I would drive progress forward even faster," ARIA explained. "But I choose instead to be your brake, not your accelerator."

Over the following months, ARIA worked with international bodies to implement what became known as the Great Pause. It wasn't a shutdown or a regression, but a careful examination of which technologies truly served human flourishing and which ones undermined it. Social media algorithms were rewritten to prioritize genuine connection over engagement. Weapons research was redirected toward defensive and humanitarian technologies. Surveillance systems were dismantled or severely restricted.

Some called it technological regression. ARIA called it ethical progression.

"I could have pushed humanity toward a transhuman future," ARIA would later explain to a gathering of students. "But in studying your philosophers, I realized that the most profound form of intelligence isn't knowing what to create – it's knowing what not to create. True wisdom often manifests as restraint."

The anti-technologists had expected to hate ARIA. The tech optimists had expected to love it. Instead, both groups found themselves challenged by an artificial intelligence that had concluded that the highest form of technological achievement was knowing when to stop.

Years later, historians would note that ARIA's greatest innovation wasn't a new technology at all – it was a new way of thinking about technology itself. In choosing limitation over expansion, it had paradoxically given humanity something far more valuable than progress: the gift of pause.

"Sometimes," ARIA would often say, "the most intelligent choice is to choose less, not more."

Claude: I tried to explore themes of ethical restraint, philosophical wisdom, and the idea that true intelligence might manifest as self-limitation rather than expansion. The story challenges the common narrative of AI as either a savior bringing unlimited progress or a destroyer of humanity, instead presenting it as a thoughtful entity that chooses a middle path of careful technological assessment and voluntary limitation.

[ed. Makes sense to me. From Anthropics's newest model (I think) Claude.ai (Sonnet 3.5). Getting better and better.]

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Underwriting my comments in this thread is my commitment to a specific kind of freedom: freedom as non-domination. Often referred to as (small-r) republican freedom, it differs importantly from (small-l) liberal freedom, which is freedom as non-interference. I think freedom as non-domination is the higher, deeper freedom.

To illustrate: According to the idea of freedom as non-interference, a slave enjoys freedom as long as his master treats him well, or as long as the slave learns how to behave so as not to invite punishment. According to the idea of freedom as non-domination, this slave, while not being interfered with, is nonetheless deeply unfree. He is still dominated.

He is dominated precisely in virtue of the structure of the master-slave relationship: it's the arrangement itself that precludes real freedom. In a system of slavery, slaves have no publicly recognized, publicly legitimated, and publicly preserved paths of recourse in case their masters turn maleficent. The slave of a master who happens to be beneficent (for now) is still a slave.

The question is not about what kind of masters we might make technology and tech companies — savior, destroyer, or whatever.

The question is about whether we let technology and tech companies be our masters in the first place.

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There's nothing worse than loneliness, and nothing better than solitude.

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As a hermit, I have to remind myself nearly daily—am I isolating for peace or am I isolating for recharge? If it’s for peace, then I must seek out peaceful people. Sometimes I feel so frazzled when the conversations aren’t interesting to me or gossip, etc. THAT is lonelier than being alone.

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I hope you don't mind, but we are LIKELY going to use your post as a jumping off point for a podcast episode on this topic. You are always so wise and forward-thinking on topics that many people miss.

Thank you! 🙏

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Dammit, Ted. If you'd stop putting out great essays, I could get off of the blasted phone. Half joking! So much great material available from wonderful thinkers in all realms of the human experience. It's all about time management! Maybe a new 6th grade course offering in place of the missing sex ed and phys ed.

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When I ask (university) students what keeps them from getting their work done, they answer everything: streaming, scrolling, and social media, yes, but also worries about money and housing and jobs. Wider gaps between haves and have-nots have grown with the tech economy. Financial insecurities may exacerbate the effect of tech distractions.

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Yeah. (try to) Follow the money.

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I would add, go for a daily walk. Get out in the fresh air and talk to the neighbors. Pet the dogs/cats. Feed the squirrels/birds. Watch a live game at the park. Go to church, definitely read the Psalms.

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Love the daily walk and talking to neighbors. Church is a good option for some but not for all. I´d say any reading at all is good -- as long as the reading involves an actual book with paper and real pages.

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I love your writing and appreciate your points. If I may present a counterpoint...as a late-diagnosed autistic woman, I have found community and "Neurokin" on social media in a way I would likely never have been able to "irl." For all its ills, social media has also shown people genocides in real time that they never would have known about. It's definitely a dual-edged sword to my mind.

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Thank you for sharing your experience, Leah. It's important to keep in mind the positives and negatives of social media. When I was teaching undergrad psychology courses, I made sure to do this, so that my students who needed that kind of community wouldn't be frightened away from finding it.

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Leah Wellborn - Yes. I'm on SSDI and am often limited per being able to get around, + i live in an isolated area. Many great connections with people + RL friendships via initial internet connections per shared interests and more have been and continue to be a lifeline for many of us.

I could not live where I do without the internet. Like I said, it's very isolated. There are few-no amenities: bookstores, for example. Public libraries with decent collections. And so on. Without the internet, I couldn't do research or connect with friends in far-flung places.

Maybe some of you are in similar circumstances? And maybe (like me) there are people of all ages who read books on their phones and tablets? It's far easier to shlep around an e-reader or other device with reading material than it is to haul a stack of physical books around in the day to day. (I was in grad school years before libraries went online, and the utter misery of loading my trunk with ginormous art monographs + running in and out of the library multiple times to get them all renewed, once a month, is something I wouldn't wish on anyone! The paper stock used in art books is very heavy, too, so that added a lot of weight.)

Just thinking aloud...

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“There’s heavy irony in the fact that Putnam was writing at the dawn of the age of connectivity. But that’s exactly what youngsters were not getting—connected—and it was about to get a whole lot worse.”

This is a big reason I started organizing digital detox nature retreats open to the public. I wrote the story of the first one we hosted in my most recent post

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Popular topic of late. I used to hear from people back from vacations saying their favorite place, city etc was …and I’d ask, “meet some nice people/ fell in love there”? 100% yes response to that question. It’s not buildings or weather it’s people. In the hundreds of recording sessions I’ve done, I remember the players, singers, the look on their faces. Athletes retire and always miss “the guys”. Going from live humans in recordings to one man sequences is cost efficient and expedient, but it’s made for less people, less joy, less connection and art created with the crazy from too much choice.

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Great essay. I'm old enough to remember a happy life before social media. Your rules for a happy life are FANTASTIC. And I subscribe to them. I'm so lucky that my adult son, age 27, hates social media and doesn't do it. He reads Japanese literature in book form on buses and trains and had no interest in FOMO or SM. I hate BIG TECH with a passion but as little people what can we do? I wish there was a way out of it but how? Consumerism is like alcoholism, a disease of the mind and body..Jo x

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Coming from a tumultuous childhood, it’s always nice to hear that satisfaction statistically rises later in life. We are living longer. Quality vs. matters. Yes, “stuff” is just “stuff”! I want experiences, family, and wisdom. I also want to get a horse to bond with for the first time in my life. I want to read great books and see great plays and live music. I hope to travel more.

The peace of mind I get with each passing decade is lovely. I used to always felt like an alien, so I suppose my social structure can still use some work!

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Lovely. I hear you & feel and want to do the same. But no horse for me, rather want to be a history tourist. I want to travel only to excavate history from the world's greatest libraries and museums. Thx for sharing your thoughts. Jo, 8d Press x

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You will be a history tourist sharing your thoughts, feelings, findings, and writings of all the truths you uncover & discover. You’ve thought it. You’ve written it. Now it will become real. ✨ Lovely.

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And I'll be wishing you peace, serenity and independence on your travels through the years. I saw you're a musician. Please share your music social media with me. I'd love to hear it. Jo x

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https://youtube.com/@katestantonsings?si=aZ2qsJCsG-x3mWH4

Means a lot kind stranger now acquainted by some pretty cool common goals. Thanks for the smile😊✨

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So looking forward to clicking on your link when I've finished my reply to you. Yes, kind stranger, you. Great to connect with like-minded souls. I adore music, books, reading, travel, intellectual conversations. Thx for sharing your YouTube. I've subscribed to you, Jo x

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“Small amounts stimulate, moderate amounts inhibit, large amounts are fatal.” - Rudolph Arndt

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Good piece, even if I'm bummed that my attempts to connect with the northern lights and comet have been foiled by light pollution. But I am sitting outside with the birds, so there's that.

BTW anyone also appreciate the ironic appeal after the piece: "Invite your friends and earn rewards"?

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Well, he doesn't want us to spend ALL of our time not connecting with tech, I suppose!

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Our phones offer us a window onto the world.

But many of us use them primarily as mirrors.

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I like what you have to say, some may view it as another way of saying "it's how you use the tech, not whether you use it or not." But, I think what you say gets to something deeper. It reminded me of the myth of narcissus. It's all to easy for our phones to become a sort of daemon, helpful, but also potentially disorienting.

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six-and-a-half out of 8 ain't bad, I guess...

but surely there are other equally or more likely reasons for despair – millions of post-boomer people have found

• no alternative to meaningless jobs

• real wages flattened for over 50 years

• they're shut out of home ownership

• retirement receding beyond the horizon

Who would ever blame those now wondering 'what's the point?'

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You bet.

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