[marginalium]
Distraction is mind obesity
24 Apr 2025
Distraction is mind obesity. It’s another ‘the attention economy is bad’ article. But I liked it because it’s not just about taking our attention away, it’s about how that process sort-of removes us from living our lives:
Everyone knows that office worker who complains about emails all day and then spends their free time doing email. Studies have shown that our attention wanders if a phone is merely visible on the table
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At its highest pitch this kind of stimulation can strip people of their humanity. The book’s most shocking passages are about the hi-tech slot machines in casinos, engineered to such a point of perfection that players routinely wet themselves while playing …
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Screens are only part of the problem. Modern cars are being continually upgraded with features that remove the driver from the experience of being on the road. From the Toyota recall in 2008 came the surprising nugget that there are electronics in the brakes, designed to mimic the feeling you get under the pedal when hydraulic brakes start to wear. … Even children’s TV has changed. Rather than using his own ingenuity, Mickey Mouse now enlists a device called the Handy Dandy Machine, which magicks an appropriate solution to his dilemma.
As usual, no solutions. Best kind of creepypasta.
Anthologies: Gratification, Somatic Architecture, Wealth Architecture, On Aesthetics, On Being Fruitful, Neurotypica, No Action Without Emotion