There's nothing in your life or in our collective problems that does not require our ability to put our attention where we care about. At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time.
Tristan HarrisRead
The EU can lead the world toward more humane technology. But doing so requires thinking more broadly about reining in social media platforms to prevent them from degrading our democracies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The EU has the potential to guide the development of technology in a more ethical direction, necessitating broader considerations for social media regulation.
Tristan Harris emphasizes the responsibility of the European Union in influencing the trajectory of technology to ensure it aligns with human values. He warns that without adequate regulation of social media platforms, these technologies could undermine democratic principles, calling for a more comprehensive approach to technology governance that prioritizes the common good over profit and influence.
Themes
EuTechnologySocial MediaDemocracyRegulationHumane
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference on digital ethics, this quote can highlight the importance of regulatory frameworks.
More from Tristan Harris
All quotes βTechnology steers what 2 billion people are thinking and believing every day. It's possibly the largest source of influence over 2 billion people's thoughts that has ever been created. Religions and governments don't have that much influence over people's daily thoughts.
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You're either on, and you're connected and distracted all the time, or you're off, but then you're wondering, am I missing something important? In other words, you're either distracted or you have fear of missing out.
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Technology is causing a set of seemingly disconnected things - shortening of attention spans, polarization, outrage-ification of culture, mass narcissism, election engineering, addiction to technology.
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I'm an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That's why I spent the last three years as a Design Ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people's minds from getting hijacked.
Tristan HarrisRead
If we really wanted to have a reorientation of the tech industry toward what's best for people, then we would ask the second question, which is, what would be the most time well spent for the thing that people are trying to get out of that situation?
Tristan HarrisRead
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