The Right to Attention in an Age of Distraction

http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-right-to-attention-in-age-of.html

by dredmorbius • 9 years ago

119 49 9 years ago

philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com

rwieruch• 9 years ago

Amazing article, thanks for sharing it. I am highly interested in this topic, even though I have no professional connection to it. Thanks for your deep dive into it!

It quickly reminded me of Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Deep Work by Cal Newport. It was no surprised to find these people again in your article. In one article of mine, I have reflected on this topic as well and concluded how important attention (for instance created through deep work) can lead to a satisfied life (because of flow). [0]

Can you recommend further reading material on this topic?

[0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work-flow/

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Submitter here.

John Danaher (the author) posts to Google+ (where I'd first sighted this), and addresses similar questions at times. Csikszentmihalyi is one of the better Western authors on the topic. And good material (accessible, insightful, not facile) is difficult to find. Robert Sopolsky is another favourite. Daniel Kahneman has some useful insights.

I'm finding myself going through much of the background and history of philosophy, media studies, advertising, distraction, and more, over the past year or so, increasingly over the 2016 US election cycle and aftermath. I've also found my own ability to tolerate distraction, and/or response to removing distractions, is profound. Jerry Mander, Niel Postman, and Noam Chomsky have some commentary on this.

I'm particularly interested in the limits and properties of attention. There's some literature here -- David Simon, Alvin Toffler, and via their references, some earlier work.

There's also much in the mindfulness and meditation literature, some good, much not, going back through several thousand years of Japanese, Chinese, and Indian traditions, though you'll also find some of this within Judeo-Christian and Islamic texts, as well as others.

I'm coming to view the state of attention and mindfulness as the necessary quiet in which to detect subtle distinctions -- a cleanroom or highly-calibrated state, if you will. It's not for all purposes, but is essential to some.

tdaltonc5• 9 years ago

I'm a professional attention engineer. After getting my PhD in NeuroEconomic I built two tools that I think are going to be really important in the coming attention wars.

I strongly agree with the author about the importance of an individual autonomy over attention. I also agree with the author that these tools create an opportunity to empower individual autonomy to a degree never seen before. And I get out of bed everyday to make sure that these tools are used that way.

My tools:

http://usedopamine.com/

http://youjustneedspace.com/

28451975413• 9 years ago

I wish there was a tool that would turn my smartphone into a dumbphone (only capable of texting and calling) for a period of time and the only way to unlock it would be a factory reset. I would like this for my PC as well. That would be some deep space.

Terr_2• 9 years ago

I'd rather be able to lock myself out from distracting apps for a relatively short span (e.g. 30-60m) and the mechanism to unlock it somehow requires either meditation or -- since calm is hard to detect -- a certain kind of novelty-less focus.

Brainstorming: Suppose you must enter a random 3 digit code for an early "unlock" of no-distraction mode. The only way to get the code is to watch a blank screen for 2-3 minutes, where each digit is briefly visible at an unpredictable time spread out through the duration.

The task would be relatively easy, yet also force the user to have a bit of "uncomfortable alone with their thoughts" time while waiting for the next digit to appear.

tdaltonc5• 9 years ago

If you block an app, you still want it, but your wanting is frustrated.

Our goal with Space is to actually rewire your wanting system. If you use space, the impulse to open the app should decrease.

For us, real freedom is to kill the wanting.

ThrowAway123543• 9 years ago

Dopamine seems to be an API that automates and optimizes the display of "rewards" (positive messages or images) in an app to increase usage, right? And there's ML to optimize timing of the rewards, but it's basically exploiting the same effect seen with randomized rewards, i.e. the thing that makes gambling addictive, right? Is that a fair summary? That doesn't seem like it's giving "an individual autonomy over attention". It seems like the exact opposite.

I don't understand what the other thing, Space, does. Does it just interrupt social media apps periodically? It seems more like an attempt at viral marketing for Dopamine than something that's intended for real people to use, but I can't tell what it does and I'm not on iOS.

c54• 9 years ago

Just installed it. It generates a link on your homescreen from the app you need space from (ie twitter, in my case). Link looks like the twitter app icon.

When I tap it it loads the browser on a page saying "breath with me" for a second or two, and then loads the twitter app.

I can imagine 1) needing the breath and that working out, 2) ditching the process of loading twitter if i'm asked to breath

both would be good outcomes

anigbrowl5• 9 years ago

I did not know (but am not surprised) to know that 'attention engineer' is a standardized job description now, or indeed that there's a whole field of neuroeconomics - most interesting. I can't help noticing that your two tools seem to be directly opposed to each other; usedopamine offers to leverage dopamine hits for commercial purposes, whereas youjustneedspace seems designed to insulate users from exactly that problem - I hope. If the two are designed to complement each other in order to increase the commercial payoff of individual dopamine hits then I would have to question whether you were being altogether straight with users of the latter tool.

You may find my other comment on this post interesting or boringly obvious. I'm fascinated by what you're doing here but right now I'm not sure whether I love you or hate you.

tdaltonc5• 9 years ago

I would prefer to say that they're 'symmetrical.'

It should be easy for a person to add and remove habits from their life. The Dopamine API makes app more effective at creating habits so that users can add them. Space makes it easy for users to out down habits that they wish they didn't have.

amelius• 9 years ago

I think the problem to be solved is a simpler one: choice.

Right now, our focus/attention is at the mercy of only a few big companies. Because of the silos/"network effect", we can't switch to other providers, and there is basically no competition, and no way out for consumers.

If there was choice, we could switch to service providers that are more decent regarding our attention.

Another angle on the problem could be ads. If we would not allow ads, but just paid a fixed amount of money for a service, then the whole attention-grabbing problem would not exist.

skybrian2• 9 years ago

Maybe, but if anything, smaller companies tend to be more attention-seeking, since they don't have anything to fall back on.

Subscriptions don't do it either, by themselves. Many companies will try to get more revenue out of your existing customers.

And even charities are attention-seeking (if you get on their mailing list).

Furthermore, it's hard to say what kinds of attention-seeking are actually wrong. On the one hand there's spam, and on the other it gets very blurry.

eveningcoffee• 9 years ago

The http://usedopamine.com/ does not work properly with Firefox. It would be great if you fixed this issue.

skybrian2• 9 years ago

"Space" is exactly the browser extension I was thinking of writing myself. I might still need to write it though, because the permissions are scary:

  "Read and change data on all the websites you visit."

It's hard to see how a small company can win that trust. I think maybe this needs to be open source, or built into the browser.

orthoganol• 9 years ago

I thought this was satire, especially looking at the team page.

You help people get addicted to apps and then with the other hand you help them cope with their addiction so it doesn't get to a breaking point where they actually quit the app. And this is what you are so proud of that gets you out of bed every morning?

Interesting people out there...

hammock• 9 years ago

Does Dopamine work for email and other channels as well or just app notifications?

tdaltonc5• 9 years ago

Yep! Shoot us an email and we'd be happy to explain it in more detail.

stonesixone2• 9 years ago

One thing that intrudes on attention that has been around even before computers is noise pollution. Living in a city, loud motorcyclists and fire (and police) sirens are constant irritations. Unlike visual intrusions, you can't look away or close your eyes. Even plugging your ears only muffles loud sounds.

And in cafe settings where you might be working, there's the problem of people who talk on their phones, as well as not silencing their phone, so you hear a "ding" every time they get a text, etc.

Arizhel• 9 years ago

I have a terrible time with work because of distractions, but the noise pollution in a city doesn't bother me much at all. Loud motorcyclists are a pain, but it helps to live in places where there aren't too many of those (i.e. places with culture). Sirens are the main thing that you can't get away from, but those really aren't that common unless you live in a really dangerous place perhaps.

Even working in a cafe using WiFi is a nice experience for me. Cafes I've sat in don't have people yakking on their phones; I've never seen that as it seems to be quite forbidden by the unspoken social code of such places. There might be some phone beeps, but it's not that big a deal, and I don't have much trouble shutting it out.

The problem I see, and have personally, isn't noise in a city, it's noise in the workplace, because of the open-plan office. I could concentrate far better in a city park or a coffee shop than I can in those stupid open-plan offices, where I'm constantly overhearing (whether I want to or not) the conversations of coworkers, and constantly worrying about coworkers sneaking up behind me. Honestly, I would do far better having a remote-only job where I'm required to work in a coffee shop all day long than I do in open-plan offices.

anigbrowl5• 9 years ago

Very true. Some sounds are worse than others, depending on the degree to which their frequency distribution differs from that of the environment. Thus, construction noise (jackhammers and so on) is annoying, but you can get used to it. The warning beeps on reversing vehicles, on the other hand, drive me towards suicidal despair, and no, I am not exaggerating for effect. I have never seen any actual evidence that they reduce accidents; they seem like a good idea that was adopted to reduce liability without any evidence of actual effectiveness.

Other unnecessary but infuriating sources of noise pollution are car alarms that don't know when to quit, and leafblowers, which are not only extremely noisy due to the 2-stroke engine, they pollute heavily with fumes (very unhealthy for the operator) and typically just move dirt and debris off private property and into common areas, exploiting three externalities for a very small labor saving. I must confess that I fantasize about meeting the person who invented them and exacting a horrible revenge for the intense distress they cause me - again, I'm not exaggerating for comic effect. If someone starts one of those up within 30 feet of me it takes all my strength not to fall to my knees and start vomiting.

I liked living in cities when I was younger but these days I'm trying to figure out the logistics of living in a remote location like a forest or the Mojave desert, which is the only place I've ever felt truly relaxed. I worked there for a month (with a film crew) a few years ago and it was heaven.

k-mcgrady• 9 years ago

This is a problem for some people, not all. Particularly noise pollution. I'm easily distracted and live in London and noise just doesn't bother me anymore. I used to need complete silence to sleep and now (in summer) I have my windows fully open, there are loud cars, sirens, people etc. going by all night, and I sleep soundly.

I take issue with the point about working in cafés as I see it a lot with tech people (so this isn't specifically directed at you). A café is a place for people to eat/drink and socialise and it has been for at least over 100 years. The rest of the world shouldn't have to redefine the social constraints of an established venue because people cheap out on an office and choose to work there.

stonesixone2• 9 years ago

I actually don't mind people talking and socializing, etc, in cafes. It's when people talk on phones in cafes like it's their personal office space that I find it annoying (at least for me).

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

Noise pollution, and complaints of city noises (and smells) pre-date industrial times. You'll particularly find diatribes about this from writers, scientists, and philosophers. Horse's hooves and carriage-wheels on cobbles and pavingstones, for example.

Prior to organised sanitation systems, olefactory assaults were also far more common.

gnicholas3• 9 years ago

Interesting idea, but even if there were a protectable right to attention, how would we accommodate differences in distractability? That is, some people are very easily distracted by banner ads, and other people do not find them troublesome (though their behavior may still be influenced by having seen ads they did not focus on).

In the American legal system, we have a concept known as the "eggshell plaintiff rule", which addresses heterogeneity among tort victims (i.e., victims of car accidents or other negligent acts) This rule says that if you injure someone and it turns out that they have some peculiar bodily weakness (like a skull as thin as an eggshell, hence the name), you are responsible for whatever injuries result. It doesn't matter that the magnitude of the injuries was totally unforeseeable.

Although this rule offers one way to handle heterogeneity among people, it only kicks in after a recognizable tort has occurred. In the case of attentional heterogeneity, the threshold question of what type of distraction is too distracting is at issue. So it seems like it would be very difficult to figure out a workable standard here.

That said, I'm very interested in the topic, and actually recently released a new feature in my Chrome extension [1] that visually dims distracting elements on the page. I do hope that we can find a way to cut down on distractions — I'm just not sure a new legal right is the most likely path.

1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj...

anigbrowl5• 9 years ago

Excellent arguments, and an interesting extension too. I already use a CSS customizer to clean up the pages I visit most frequently but I'll give this a try as an alternative.

My very first impression was that I'd rather have the color text as an available option rather than the default; I've got so much effort invested in navigating blocks of text over the years that this feels like driving over rumble strips. But it's easy to adjust and I appreciate the depth to which you've thought into this problem.

gnicholas3• 9 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! You can turn off autocolor, which will flip the default as you suggest. But you might find that after reading with it for a little while, your eyes/brain acclimate to it.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

That's a question I think the article is particularly useful for in that it suggests a model: Privilege, Power, Claim, and Immunity. Within these concepts, I see the emergence of both legal and technical means to address the matter.

The concepts of product liability and mitigations, generally addressed through an insurance, that is, risk-pricing system, which moves otherwise uncertain and frequently avoided costs, to the fore, putting a tangible and current price on them, is another model.

gnicholas3• 9 years ago

Interesting — I didn't find the framework to be helpful in this regard. That is, the key question (how to handle differences in distractibility) lives on in the Claim section: A duty on others not to interfere with or hijack your attention, and your capacity to pay attention

This will mean very different things for different people. How does the framework handle this?

anigbrowl5• 9 years ago

He was surprised to find that he was shown advertisements while he waited for the prompt. Somebody had decided that this moment — the moment between swiping your card and inputting your details — was a moment when they had a captive audience and that they could capitalise on it.

This is precisely what is wrong with capitalism right here - the extraction of value from an unwilling participant. (Please note that this is not equivalent to saying capitalism is completely invalid.)

It's no good to argue people agreed to this when signing up for a bank account of whatever. People need banking facilities and other services; few have the time, inclination, or education to read the absurdly long contractual terms foisted upon them by most service providers, and in any case such contracts are contracts of adhesion rather than negotiations, and it's very difficult for participants in the market to make direct comparisons between competing offerings right now. What's happening here is a form of legal theft of a person's time and attention.

As someone who suffers from severe ADHD, I particularly resent this. It's hard to explain the interior experience to someone who doesn't have an executive function disorder, but think of the magazine rack in a convenience store, with all the photographs, fonts, colors and baity headlines. You see a bunch of magazines, I see a crowd of people screaming at me and causing me to temporarily forget why I walked into the store. Over the years I've had to evolve strategies to deal with this sort of thing, like choosing my route through stores I visit regularly and pre-emptively controlling the direction of my gaze to minimize unwelcome distractions.

Now, I don't blame the store owners or the magazine publishers for this - it's very annoying, but a marketplace is a busy environment where sellers (or brands) compete for buyers' attention, and it's not their fault that I suffer from a disability. But when I'm dealing with a bank or whoever, their underlying business model is the cake and the extra money they make from advertising to a captive audience is icing on top - icing that is basically purchased at the cost of my convenience and train of thought. And even with ad blockers and so on, I'm sure you can easily think of many ways that distractions are imposed on unwilling information consumers, and how those distractions are engineered to be as unpredictable and disruptive as possible so as to capture people's attention.

Now, all of us have the experience of being distracted by things when we're trying to concentrate. But when you have an executive function disorder, the problem is twofold; not only is your attention distracted, but it's a lot of extra work to control your own reaction to the distraction. I have to do that work in public or in a shared workplace, unless I have very tolerant colleagues indeed. But maintaining that control costs effort; when I'm alone or feeling relaxed at home, those control mechanisms are not fully operational, and so an unexpected distraction can trigger an outsize response, which is itself distracting and stressful. Say you're reading an article on screen and you're a couple of hundred words in when a pop-up fades in to invite you to purchase a subscription or somesuch (note, please, the engineering of attention here; hook the reader with the content of that article in order to leverage that focused attention to the advert that is slipped in without warning). You may find this irritating enough that it makes you roll you eyes or frown while you click it away. If it happens to me at the wrong time or too frequently, I'm likely to find myself suddenly screaming FUCK OFF!!! at the screen, which is itself distracting, and now my focus has not merely been interrupted but shattered, and I have a surge of adrenaline with the pounding heartbeat, upset stomach, cold sweats and so on.

Lest this seem like an extended complaint about the world just being too damn complex, one of the odd things about ADHD is that in some contexts it lets me function better than neurotypical people. In a quiet environment like a library or when I'm painting, I can focus in total concentration for hours on end, because I've built up those mental muscles for dealing with a noisy distracting world. Equally, in what are very high-stress environments for other people I feel quite at home - I am that calm and clear-thinking person that you want to show up at the scene of a car accident or other dangerous situation, because those situations are not really any worse to me than having to stand in line at a 7-11 counter. In fact, they're better(!) because I don't have to act as if nothing is happening, something actually is happening and the external world is matched up well with my internal world. In those situations I can assess risk, tell people what to do, get people out of cars without injuring them further, move them to safety, call emergency services, and basically manage everything with no more anxiety than making coffee. Had I had this insight and resources when I was younger I'd probably have gone into photojournalism or something; I've been in several riots, and though I don't participate in them I have to say that I enjoy such chaotic situations rather than finding them frightening or confusing.

Getting back to the captive attention situation which launched this thought, I'd like to conclude with one of my tediously frequent ethical pleas: developers, please consider the implications of what you are being asked to work on. When the business/marketing people ask you to help them leverage the user's attention away from service delivery and toward advertising, you are the only person in the room with the opportunity to speak up for the consumer, and to query whether interrupting them is actually an effective and sustainable strategy, or more likely to drive people away. If you are being asked to do something that you know is going to make the user experience worse, consider asking or encouraging the business people to quantify the aggregated time cost to the user vs the hoped-for profit to your employer, even if you're a solo developer and you are your own boss.

At the very least, ask them how much revenue this strategy is expected to generate, and demand that they furnish you with that information rather than just being a passive agent of their desires. You may be able to suggest more effective and less intrusive ways to create value for both seller and buyer, which is the good, ethical kind of business that makes the world a better place. On the other hand, if you are down with extracting as much value for the consumer as quickly as possible and then moving on (unlikely if you've bothered to read this far, but possible), then you are a Bad Person and you should feel bad about yourself, if only because your selfish tendencies are likely to painfully rebound on you at some point, and changing your outlook may well prove to be more sustainable than making a quick buck.

Thanks for reading.

bradfordarner• 9 years ago

There seems to be a basic problem in this argument: a lack of definition of distraction or any discussion of its value.

For example, lets assume the consciousness is an illusion, a sort of biological trick of evolution. In that case, I'm not sure why we couldn't say that all the stimuli from advertisements, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are equal in value to "focused conscious awareness". They are stimuli of a different sort but qualitatively no different than the stimuli of "focused conscious awareness". I'm not sure why we would inherently assume that "focused conscious awareness" is of greater value. There are tons of people now who are living in a permanently distracted state and they seem to have a conscious experience that is not qualitatively different than other people's. They don't slip into a coma or get concussions or die.

Heck, maybe distraction is a better state than attention. After all, don't people complain of headaches when they focus on a problem for too long?

alanbernstein2• 9 years ago

Some people have long-term goals, and the distractions distract from accomplishing them. The qualitative difference is that people who can avoid the distractions are better able to make progress toward their goals.

Nobody wants to look back on their life and think "yep, I sure am glad I got all that facebooking in before I died."

lordCarbonFiber• 9 years ago

That seems a bit reductive. Im sure plenty of people are going to look back and say "Im sure glad I reconnected with that college flame" or "Im sure glad I shared those pictures with my extended family".

For sure there is a whole host of negative effects that can spiral out of social media addiction. But the shear existence of the distraction is more neutral. I feel like we are hesitant to admit that many of our modern distractions aren't particularly "new"; it's just a lot easier to collect evidence and stats. Considering reading a tabloid and gossiping offline vs reading fake news and commenting on FB, etc.

anigbrowl5• 9 years ago

They are stimuli of a different sort but qualitatively no different than the stimuli of "focused conscious awareness"

Would you say that there was no qualitative difference between a long massage by a skilled therapist and being attacked by a swarm of angry wasps? From a phenomenological point of view both are simply different varieties of sensation, and it's true that by cultivating a sort of meditative stoicism one could distance oneself from considerations of discomfort sufficiently well to put up with that or even worse pains...but maintaining that degree of detachment is equivalent to sacrificing one's ability to operate and participate in the world.

To the extent that one wishes to to be engaged with life vs. transcending it, the qualitative differences are vast, and increasingly onerous.

pixl97• 9 years ago

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-is-technology-do...

Sam Harris and Tristan Harris recently had a (pretty long) podcast related to this subject. Well worth listening to if you have the time.

colmvp• 9 years ago

I also recommend listening to Ezra Klein's interview with Cal Newport, author of "Deep Work", a great book about the importance of focused attention on hard problems mentioned in another HN comment - http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/ca....

I've always been a huge proponent of technology, but not unlike hard drugs or alcohol, I've noticed my addiction to news (and previously, social media) has absolutely affected my productivity and attention span to the point where I've had to make some rather drastic changes to regain my ability to focus.

djjeoefndijf• 9 years ago

Well I'm glad HN can put an article with 58 points and 4 hours on the front page while BS like the FBI violating surveillance law gets pushed to the second page.

Right to attention indeed...

dang• 9 years ago

Would you please not post this sort of thing? There are plenty of reasons why stories rank differently from what you'd expect. In the case you're referring to, the site is penalized in a way that is standard for political/partisan sites (regardless of which side they're on).

Meanwhile a comment like this one just adds noise and is off-topic in at least 3 ways.

dredmorbius5• 9 years ago

What HN chooses to reward/promote, or not, is exceedingly idiosyncratic. I honestly didn't expect much out of this piece, though I did think it addressed a useful and important question. I was surprised to find it had attracted this much attention (and all due irony noted). My experience on submissions is all over the map.

There are important questions and matters out there. That's what I've been focused on for some time now, with an increasing awareness that the focus itself is a significant issue -- it's hard to make assessments of significance with a cluttered mind.

If you feel that surveillance and intelligence agency or law-enforcement issues are significant (and I believe they are, very much), then find and submit good stories on same. Do it frequently. Realise that you'll be lucky (very lucky) to see one in ten submissions go anywhere.

Part of the skill is in recognising the moods of the beast. Even then, it'll do what it'll do.

namuol• 9 years ago

If you find this sort of discussion interesting, I strongly recommend checking out Time Well Spent: http://www.timewellspent.io/

SubuSS• 9 years ago

Whenever we talk about protection, I always harken back to the study that said kids who learnt martial arts with body armor actually ended up getting hurt more than the kids who don't use em. We see a similar effect in case of body immunity etc: Third world countries just live through so many environmental effects that they build a natural immunity.

IOW, I wonder if it is sane to restrict these or just let people figure it out: I remember a time when everything on facebook was about zynga games and then they just went away.

I mean the ability to focus on a given task persistently has produced so many good results: Why wouldn't we want to hone and develop that by providing as many distractions as possible?

guelo• 9 years ago

The zynga stuff went away because facebook cut them off, not because of some collective decision or somesuch.

The Right to Attention in an Age of Distraction

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