An 'Attention economy' within our 'distraction culture'

http://theweek.com/articles/737813/how-silicon-valley-hooks

Our addiction to social media was planned as a means of making software engineers rich. It was no conspiracy. Just good old capitalism of giving people what they want and rewarding their ‘likes’.

Unfortunately, the consequences of these creative ‘connecting’ apps were not fully understood. Not until Trump was elected.

Most people recognized their loss privacy and reasonably feared a ‘big brother’ government. Masses of lazy citizens largely relying on social media for their news. This only accelerated the decline of our democracy via mass misinformation, both intentional (fake news) and via our gross ignorance on important issues (war, terrorism, government, geography, and politics just to name a few).

But it was our innate tendency to be easily distracted that was reinforced over time by a culture of comfort and lack of responsibility or accountability for any beliefs we might acquire with our short attention spans. These qualities enabled the app ‘attention’ getters to get insanely wealthy. And our politics to get insanely crazy.

Thus we have a ‘attention economy’ built on top of a ‘distraction culture’. Can you think of a solution to this trend? It doesn’t matter. As the saying goes ‘”culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands." - Eric Alterman

" Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price-individually and collectively-for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene."  - Chalmers Johnson

"To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity."  -  Chris Hedges

Dear Editor,

It doesn’t matter if Trump’s distracting antics are a result of his genius or insanity. The bigger problem that Dana Milbank (“Get ready for Trump fireworks” Sunday 12-3-17) alludes to is that most newspaper readers are addicted to distractions instead of important issues.

Social media engineers used their genius to bring us addictive apps that made our lives increasingly out of touch with reality… insane. We think we are more ‘connected’ to the world texting while walking across the street. Using the cognitive science’s findings on addiction they created a booming ‘attention economy’, making themselves insanely rich. But few had any concern for either the immediate or long term consequences on our nation.

Nearly half of all Americans now get their (fake?) news from social media platforms that we are increasingly addicted to. And, while many people and software companies are now rightfully concerned about the loss of individual privacy and the larger risk to our democracy from an increasingly misinformed electorate, few have raised concerns about our longer term and more serious addiction to distractions.

Our species was never engineered (via evolution or creation) to passively accept hyper-paced lives and the exponential growth of technological change. And, no one engineered our governing and electoral systems to accommodate these stresses either. What most people want are simple and comfortable lives speckled with random but largely non-life threatening distractions. Unfortunately, lethal threats have been growing in the absence of us being responsible citizens regularly petitioning our elected officials.

For decades most Americans lived in a relatively comfortable economy peppered daily with semi-exciting distractions (sports, sex scandals, movies, wine tastings, concerts, and political side shows). Our comforts enabled our distractions. Meanwhile we persistently ignored the important issues all around us. Rarely do we consider applying the fundamental principles that our nation was founded on (“Truths” we ‘hold to be self-evident’”). Or, the “pledge” most Americans have given repeatedly to the flag to ensure “liberty and justice for all”.

So Trump’s genius or insanity is not the problem! He is just a symptom of our ‘attention economy’ built on our ‘culture of distraction’. It is as unsustainable as Trump’s failure of principled leadership.