elephant in the livestream
This week, Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology unveiled their new mission: "to reverse human downgrading by inspiring a new race to the top and realigning technology with humanity." They have been major advocates in sharing the exploitative nature of our attention economy with society. In simple terms, they helped wake everyone up to just how much our technology is intentionally manipulating us. Over the past years, they've met with leaders of major tech companies and political heads to discuss how we might regulate modern internet platforms from polarizing us, spreading propaganda, and influencing our well being.
In 2016, I asked "Is popular culture, media, and science’s renewed interest in meditation a coincidence, or is it a visceral reaction to our culture of attention theft?". To me, it's quite clear that our growing fragmentation of attention is directly related to our growing interest in mindfulness. Our smartphones, social media, sensationalist news, and addictive design patterns are noticeably shifting our mental states and moods, and many of us are searching for a renewed focus and clarity in daily life. I believe that mindfulness will play a key role in our collective response to this crisis of mind; as an activist cause in personal practice, where we reclaim choice in how to spend our lives, but also in our ability to see what's happening with clarity and take social action.
In my work, I straddle the mindfulness community with the tech industry. Attention activism has felt like a pretty niche position to take with my colleagues in the tech community. It still is. Yet, on the livestream of Tristan's announcement this past Tuesday, something magical happened. Even though this is a community that usually speaks mostly in the language of technology and design, the presentation opened and closed with guided meditations from well-known teachers. Imagine my surprise!
It was lovely to see the organization's growing confidence in sharing this practice. At the same time, I couldn't help notice the elephant in the livestream. It was kind of funny, the whole group was meditating together, and the word mindfulness was even on one of the slides, yet somehow the topic was never explicitly addressed at all. The relationship between mindfulness and the attention economy was not explicitly stated, yet there it was in form and structure. I'm not sure if they're stuck in 60s / 70s worries about being considered too "hippie" or "woo woo", or if they simply don't see the link the same way we do, but in either case, I don't think it was a coincidence.