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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Technology is altering human behavior and society in significant, often negative ways.
Tristan Harris's quote highlights the various adverse effects that technology is having on our lives, including shorter attention spans, increased division in society, cultural outrage, a focus on self rather than community, manipulation in politics, and a pervasive addiction to digital devices. These elements reflect a worrying trend in human behavior shaped by technological advancements and the digital environment we inhabit.
Themes
TechnologyAttentionSocietyBehaviorCultureNarcissismAddiction
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on mental health, one could use this quote to illustrate how technology impacts our attention and social connections.
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.
Tristan HarrisRead
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.
Tristan HarrisRead
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
With our Paleolithic instincts, we're simply unable to resist technology's gifts. But this doesn't just compromise our privacy. It also compromises our ability to take collective action.
Tristan HarrisRead
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