We’ve never been more skittish and distracted.

It’s not because we’re getting older and finding it difficult to concentrate. It’s because thanks to a global pandemic and the velocity of late-era digital capitalism, we’ve suddenly been slammed forward to where we were going to be in fifteen years’ time.

Our technological future has arrived faster than any of us imagined. We pushed forward a generation’s worth of technological advancements in a year or two. It’s been exhilarating and exhausting. Our bodies and minds and spirits have been racing to catch up. Our technology has superseded our biology.

Our attention has been collateral damage. The greatest minds of our generation have not been working to cure cancer. They’ve dedicated themselves to creating ever more powerful algorithms to tear our attention away from ourselves towards the highest bidder.

The typical American worker now focuses on a given task for just three minutes. Each day on average, we touch or check our phones more than two-thousand times and spend more than three hours heads bowed staring at them.

Our autonomy has been pixellated. Our attention is frittered away. Our focus is fractured.

The global pandemic has made us hyper-vigilant, constantly scanning the horizon for danger. Such stress makes it even harder to focus. So we scan and scroll and scan and scroll.

Experts say we should take more personal responsibility, pick ourselves up by our pixels. If only it were that easy. Willpower alone cannot override thousands of years of biological imperative. Praying to Jesus ain’t going to help either.

To gain attention we have to look away. Better yet we have to switch off our devices and dependencies. Give our cells and synapses time to breathe. Act instead of react.

Do we want a better world? A fairer world? A world that is more just and equal, more helpful and free? More common decency?

Our control of our attention is the necessary prerequisite for imaging and pursuing the world we want.

References

“Modern media is a denial-of-service attack on your free will” Nautilus (2017)

“Screen new deal” The Intercept (2020)