
We’re creating a culture of distraction - nava
http://joekraus.com/were-creating-a-culture-of-distraction
======
pirateking
Perhaps some of the most enlightening years of my life were towards the end of
high school, when my computer died. At the time I was going through a youthful
phase of freeing myself from worldly attachment. I just didn't bother fixing
it or getting another. All my electronics and possessions, save for my stereo
system, some books, and writing tools were packed away or sold. I wore pretty
much the same clothes every day.

At school, I got in trouble for writing my essays on paper, when they were to
be typed. I had no way of communicating with my friends who were all using
cellphones and IM, so I just talked to them at school if I saw them. If I
wanted to play video games, I went to the arcade, and since I had no car, it
was always a fun adventure getting there and back. From the perspective of
others, I was becoming an outcast. From my new perspective, they were the
outcasts - out of touch with themselves, mindless robots in an artificial
reality.

I spent my time reading books, writing my thoughts down, sketching ideas,
taking walks, observing humans and nature, introspecting, and developing my
personal philosophy and plans for the future.

Eventually I grew out of the phase, bought a bunch of new stuff, including a
new computer, and got addicted to the Internet harder than ever. It led to a
lot of great things - getting better at programming, participating in a bunch
of online communities, making money, sharing my work and thoughts, and finding
inspiration from others. However, there is always a nagging feeling that my
younger self is questioning my lifestyle.

No matter how far in the zone I am, how much effort I take to remove the
distractions from my environment, how secluded a place I go to get away from
it all - I cannot reach the level of clarity and the perspective from those
days. Just knowing that sweet feeling that awaits once I am jacked into a live
connection again, and hit the browser tab, is enough.

The crux is not a culture of distraction - it is that our culture, especially
our technology, is too heavily skewed towards consumption over creation. To
make full use of our humanity, we need to be able to take the time to look
inside ourselves - we need to allow ourselves to be distracted from within.
The Internet by nature creates connections outwards - perhaps balance can be
restored by finding its inverse. An Intronet _?

_ A computer, much like paper and other creative mediums, is an impressive
tool for exploring and expressing the inner self. An Intronet may actually be
a cultural shift in computing rather than a technological development.

~~~
GuiA
Your story reminds me of Thoreau's motivation for Walden (highly recommended
to anyone who hasn't read it).

With this in mind, it feels like the sentiment expressed by the author of the
posted link, yourself, and many others (including myself) might just be a
constant of humanity, no better or worse now than it ever was (much like many
other things; for instance adults saying that teenagers are more disrespectful
than ever, which is a feeling that the ancient greeks expressed several
millennia ago).

~~~
pirateking
Funny you mention. Walden was one of the books I read during that period of my
life, and it heavily influenced me.

Also related, the idea of Degrowth (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth>).

------
tedsuo
Oh the irony of distracting myself by reading this on Hacker News, then making
a comment which I will flip back to and check reflexively for the next two
hours.

~~~
brianwillis
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that goes back and checks their
comments.

I know it's superficial, but it still gives me a buzz to wake up in the
morning and see a bunch of up votes and replies to something I wrote the night
before. It's equally frustrating when I say something I think is smart and it
gets ignored.

Damn you internet, validate my existence!

~~~
thaumaturgy
Here, let me feed your habit a little more. ;-)

I don't think it's about validating your existence. I think it's that internet
communities are gradually replacing more traditional forms of interaction. We,
even introverts, still crave some amount of interaction; if we don't get
useful interaction elsewhere, we can maybe get it online.

HN, and email, and everything like it becomes a _lot_ less important to me if
I've spent the day having fun with other people. (Counterpoint: I also wind
down on HN after a stressful day of dealing with other people.)

------
navs
While this was certainly not a manic episode I did go through a period where I
threw out or sold many of my possessions. I decided to leave all my electronic
items at work. This included my laptop, netbook, computer monitor and various
other gadget doohickeys from a lifetime of impulsive Thinkgeek shopping. Now I
have a cluttered desk at the office and virtually nothing at home. But not
having a computer at home has been incredibly liberating. Four weeks ago I
lost my smartphone and seeing as how I don't have a computer at home I
couldn't check my emails, my messages or log into Skype. All I had was an old
iPod shuffle filled with Melanie Safka songs. Those few days without my phone
and without any way to connect to the internet were the two greatest days of
this year. I read comics from the comic book store, took a walk around the
city and at night when the city noise gets too much, I put on my little
earphones and listen to Melanie on my iPod.

I eventually got my phone back thanks to a honest taxi driver and on occasion,
I've simply left it at work choosing instead to go home with only my trusty
iPod.

I haven't done this in the past two weeks and think I'm about overdue. As for
Hacker News as a distraction, I love this infinitely useful HN newsletter[1]
by Kale (@duck). Avoid HN for the week and dedicate one day of the week to
just reading through the stories posted in the newsletter. I've noticed I tend
to pay more attention to the posts and there's less chance of me making
impulsive comments.

[1] <http://www.hackernewsletter.com/>

~~~
Evbn
I spend more time at my desk at work than anywhere at home. My work desk
should be clean and peaceful!

~~~
navs
I spend a lot of time at my desk but being a small office, my co-workers tend
to use my desk if/when I'm not present. I simply don't have as much control
over my office environment to put effort into keeping it clean and pristine.
It is what it is and so I'd rather focus on the environment that is within my
control. At least that's how I've come to rationalize it.

------
scheff
'As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and
rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into
account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions".'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World>

------
Renaud
“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is
itself the greatest of our miseries.”

\--Blaise Pascal (17th century)

------
dgallagher
I felt that full-screen mode in OS X was in part a response to avoiding
distraction.

Also, in social settings, I've noticed I'll check my phone if I'm alone, or
near people where conversation has ended. Part of that is a mini-escape, and
another part is caused by insecurity/peer pressure. If you're all alone doing
nothing, you have less perceived worth than if you're all alone doing
something.

~~~
fusiongyro
Full-screen mode did nothing for me. I can enter and leave full-screen
instantly. It added the kind of speed bump that has room on the side to be
perfectly circumvented.

I don't think it's possible to create a distraction-proof UI that is also
user-friendly.

~~~
dgallagher
Books are a distraction-proof UI. Their simplicity focuses you only to read.
Magazines and newspapers are books plus distractions. Ads divert your
attention. Thoughts in newspapers must be hunted like a wild animal, scattered
all over pages. Books only compete with external distractions, such as noise,
or you're own thoughts.

You can build a distraction-proof UI on a computer, but all parts must
cooperate. If a single one annoys, the UI has failed. This is difficult to do
if the UI's foundation, its OS, doesn't play along nicely. That's probably the
way to do it, build a new OS, or train an existing one into submission.

"I see there are wireless networks available. Would you like to connect to
one?" (...currently connected to a wired network, concentration lost...)

~~~
fusiongyro
The problem, then, is that the OS is interested in helping you multitask.

------
migrantgeek
We’re not creating anything. We’ve always found ways to distract ourselves.

Life is a horrible place underneath fishing, video games, Twitter, hiking,
stamp collecting, sports, coding, horticulture and everything else we’ve
invented. It would be impossible to live with the knowledge that you’re going
to die and have nothing to take your mind off things. That’s why solitary
confinement really is torture.

I had the “get rid of all my possessions” phase too. I sold everything and
lived out of a 28-liter backpack in South America for 18 months. What did I
learn? That everyone just wants a distraction. Often with some combo of drugs,
booze, sex and music. Yeah, sometimes I climbed mountains or got cultural and
moved in with a local but it was all done to keep my mind off death.

It’s all the same crap. Even criticizing others for their preferred
distraction is in itself a form of distraction.

I like cheap red wine, vicodin, and PlayStation myself. Sometimes I suck down
caffeine and crack open Knuth to read up on data structures but I don’t feel
it’s any better than the former. Whatever keeps the dopamine flowing is fine
by me.

~~~
Evbn
The one risk is whether today's distractions prevent you from enjoying future
ones. That is, do they interfere with your ability to obtain sustenance,
shelter, sex, and social status. This is why drug addictions are frowned upon,
but recreational use less so..

------
hoodq19
I wonder how much of this argument will always be made-- one generation after
another. As a thought experiment I put myself in my father's shoes and
replaced every reference to phone with television. The text still resonated.
I'm tempted to try seeing how many generations I could go back (all the way
back to Buddha maybe)... but I have fruit to slice.

~~~
Evbn
Heck Adam and Eve got bored and wandered into trouble with the snake when they
had more important things to do.

------
rossjudson
Please do yourselves a favour and look up Neil Postman. I can recommend
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" and "Technopoly", in particular.

~~~
nandemo
I read his "The Disappearance of Childhood" many years ago, I should put one
of these in my queue soon.

------
crag
There is another angle to this: a distracted population is a happy population.
Or at least a population that isn't marching and burning in the streets.

------
cpt1138
I don't think its a crises of attention or a culture of distraction. I think
it's that literally everyone can publish grammatically incorrect rantings with
terrible spelling and incoherent structure and we've gotten really good at
wading through the chaff. There just isn't that much good stuff out there and
yet every single person thinks they are Shakespeare. There never has been that
much great stuff it's just we relied on other means to filter it for us
(publishers, editors, etc.).

------
brianjesse
When I take my kids places, I take the sim out of my iphone and put it in a
dumbphone I got off ebay. It's like a time warp.

~~~
navs
Ah but that cursed SMS still exists on dumbphones. I'd like to see
alternatives to the John's Phone[1] which just gives us the basic calling
functionality, all we really need.

[1] <http://johnsphones.org/>

------
whatshisface
We created our distractions, and we will surely limit them if doing so becomes
worthwhile.

If a company that banned non-enterprise smartphones during work hours was more
profitable than one that did not, if the difference was great enough, the
banners would quickly overtake everyone else.

This is where culture comes from.

~~~
EGreg
How are you so sure? It seems like the red queen effect to me. We do it
because become the norm, not because we actually get anything from it.
Actually it seems to be related more to this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus>

~~~
whatshisface
I don't think you quite got what I am trying to say. Addictive smartphone
checking isn't culture, it is a problem that culture will be generated to
solve. (Well, it could also turn out to be not nearly as much of an issue as
we think it is, and then we will all forget about it save for the odd blog
post making fun of how we were scared of something as normal as walking or
watching a movie.)

------
sheraz
I would invite Mr. Kraus and all here on HN to look up Maggie Jackson's
"Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age", a great read
on this very issue. Se was talking about this years ago and has since built on
her previous work.

------
DenisM
Ability to focus (or defocus) improves with practice, so for example reading a
book for one hour every day will make wonders for you. And almost no cravings.

------
cafard
Creating? I drove to high school listening to AM radio, with three-minute
songs and short punch commercials. I did mostly quit watching TV while there
were still just three channels, and before the remote became popular. But I
still read newspapers in which the three-sentence paragraph is a long one.

------
mamoswined
THe best part about this post is that as I whizzed through my RSS feeds in
google reader, I saw the title of it as "We're creating a culture of
distinction" and said to myself "That looks boring." Yes, I am over-stimulated
and distracted...

------
kordless
Everything in moderation! Check out <http://thedigitaldetox.org>. There are
those of us who have been thinking about this problem for a while!

~~~
navs
If there's a local New Zealand version of this, sign me up! I'd love to meet
fellow hackers away from our hacking tools.

------
gulbrandr
Related:

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/07/is-
google-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2008/07/is-google-
making-us-stupid/306868/)

------
kappaknight
Great blog post... but the grammatical errors were a huge distraction.

------
fernly
TL;DR

~~~
femto
Observe a sabbath?

