BDI ATTENTION MANIFESTO
Many of us feel deeply what's wrong with "tech": How screens suck in our attention, or how social media makes us miserable.
And yet… The "tech" industry marches on with such confidence, that it can be hard to put the problem exactly into words, what can be done, or how deep the problem goes.
The problem goes deep. How deep? Read on…
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the attention economy
attention economy - (noun) - A "tech" industry where the so-called "tech" companies no longer bother with scientific research or clever inventions, but instead are concerned with selling attention.
the rise of advertising
The advertising and attention economy wasn't always this huge. Click below to play an edited 1950s video reel on this topic:
the attention calamity
Advertising and marketing went from being the fuel for the economy, to being the economy. This attention economy propels capitalist over-consumption hand-in-hand with worsening health. The attention economy is incompatible with both human happiness, and the Earth's climate.
Our attention has been bought and sold so much that our brains are getting rewired to passively accept algorithms choosing how we focus our attention. Flipping through your phone was always meant to be addictive, after all.
"tech" was supposed to save us
"Tech" does not increase our quality of life. Instead, a "tech" company can just as often be a MLM scam, a union-busting scheme, a front for exploiting legal or tax loopholes, or a pseudo-science fraud to raise money.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's common for "tech" capitalists to pour money into "tech companies" that are little more than shells around massive sales and marketing teams. They only hire enough engineers to add the finishing touches. Many "tech" capitalists simply seek to become the user-friendly (user-addicting) "useless intermediary" for people to access open source communication tools invented at public universities around the world.
"Tech" isn't about building inventions; "tech" is about building habits.
can we build better habits?
To build technology that increases our quality of life, we must first acknowledge that it's about habits, not just bits.
What product can we create that improves our habits? How can we design technology that takes power away from tech corporations? How can we "future proof" a technology, such that there is no possibility for planned obsolescence, deceptive design, eavesdropping, doom-scrolling, updates that brick devices, algorithms tweaked by psychologists to keep us hooked, or other types of buying and selling of users' attention? How can we design degrowth technology? How do we create captivating amusements and curiosities that force us off our screens? How do we design products that make you want to use them less?
Let's build technology with our eyes wide-open. Let's build based on the real world, and not a fantasy world of capitalists dreaming of limitless growth.
Climate change is real; degrowth is needed.
How do we degrow tech?
footnotes & further reading
Thanks for reading the BDI ATTENTION manifesto! If you want to dive deeper into one of these topics, read on:
The attention economy became more well-known in 2020 thanks to The Social Dilemma, a popular documentary that included warnings like: “A 5,000 person study found that higher social media use correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life satisfaction.”
Want to reduce screen usage?
- Try following the tips from the Becoming Minimalist blog
- If you think you may be suffering from a screen addiction, consider reaching out to a local, licensed mental healthcare provider, and ask them about therapy for screen addiction.
Want to learn more on the rise of "tech" pseudo-scientific frauds, or how "tech progress" is non-linear and subjective, and can make things worse?
- For a snarky collection of short reads on the pseudo-scientific "tech" scam industry: Molly White - Web 3 is Going Great
- Read Cory Doctorow's blog, especially his explanation of "enshittification" and "useless intermediary" tech: Cory Doctorow - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse (2023)
- Read how "tech" is non-linear; while graphics and other capabilities are much more dazzling today, many ancient computers from the 1970s and 1980s had quicker typing response time than more modern ones, even with millions of times less computer power: Dan Luu - Computer Latency (1977 - 2017)
- Popular tech podcasts and news sites with episodes and articles on similar topics: 404 Media, Tech Won't Save Us (also has a paperback and e-book reading list, good for offline reading)
Want to learn about degrowth?
- Degrowth, in a nutshell, is a smarter, science-based approach to sustainable prosperity, or evaluating technology and economics with measurements informed by new research on how they impact both the planet and human psychology, instead of sacrificing the planet (and our sanity!) to single-mindedly make "growth" numbers go up (e.g. "engagement", in the case of tech)
- Check out these links:
- If you are short on time or prefer "meme-based video essays", consider Think That Through: Degrowth in 7 minutes - Fighting for climate by living better (2023)
Want to learn more about how "open source libraries" are "developed around the world"?
- First, pay close attention to the difference between "scientific research
into computers" (typically free, open) and "tech companies" (for-profit)
- This difference becomes visible on a global scale. If you've only heard about Silicon Valley tech companies, you might be surprised at how computer science research takes place across the entire globe: SJR - International Computer Science Ranking (2022)
- The research community seems to be only getting more evenly distributed as time goes on, thanks largely to government spending around the world (See graphs: NSF - Publication Output)
- This research is often declared to be free/libre or open source
software, gifted no-strings-attached for the world to "remix" and use
- Free Software Foundation - What Is Free Software?
- Important to note: While some free software is a finished product for consumers (e.g. Firefox or Krita), most free software comes in the form of infrastructure and libraries (i.e. the "inner guts")
- Sometimes for-profit companies give away open source software (or CS
research) as well, which can be nice; however, this can also just become
a way to get free labor
- IBM - What is open source software? - See: "A company, on the other hand, might choose open source software over a proprietary alternative for its low (or no) cost, the flexibility to customize the source code, or the existence of a large community supporting the application. Professional or amateur programmers might volunteer their development and testing skills to an open source project, often to enhance their reputation and connect to others in the field."
- First, pay close attention to the difference between "scientific research
into computers" (typically free, open) and "tech companies" (for-profit)
Want to learn more how tech companies can sometimes just function as a marketing and advertising "useless intermediary" for free or publicly-funded software?
- Many tech companies (e.g. most if not all "platforms") rely largely on capturing attention and the network effect to stay in business (read Cory Doctorow's presentation at DEFCON in August 2023, already mentioned)
- Many consumer products by tech companies only bridge the "last gap" between the open source library (the "inner guts") and the end user, even if they make bold claims of scientific-sounding innovation:
- Bridging this "last gap" is necessary and important work; however, it's not any more necessary than the public software it's based on, and the profits are definitely not public or trickling down
- The same phenomena exists globally: While CS research takes place all
over the world, including Africa and Latin America (see above), the tech
profits remain concentrated in only a few regions. Examples:
- Thomson-Reuters' metric doesn't list a single company from Africa or Latin America: Thomson-Reuters - List of Top 100 Tech Companies
- And North American companies comprise over half of the top 100 by earnings: Companies Market Cap - Top publicly traded tech companies by earnings
Want to learn more how tech companies use "psychological manipulation" or "deceptive design"?
- There is a lot of profit to be made in the psychological manipulation of addiction. In the worst case, boosting performance measurements like "user engagement" and "user retention" (as it's often called), might just turn into a "user addiction"
- Learn more about deceptive design (sometimes called "user experience dark patterns") here:
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