Ep 72: Connections: What is genuinely worth your attention?   

Summary:   THIS WEEK we use 3 short videos to help us analyze and accept our phone/tech agency. First, we talk about a video in Vox’s new By Design series, where they chat with Tristan Harris of the Time Well Spent Initiative. Tristan spent time as a Digital Ethicist at technology companies that were designing the digital tools that fight to keep our attention and came to conclusions that could even out the persuasiveness of these very tools in our favor. Next, we review Tristan’s TEDTalk where he addresses these same issues and comes up with a three prong call to action to help us take back the power of our app usage. Lastly, we return to Vox for a video from their The Goods series and explore emoji tracking, yes,that is a thing now. As far back as 2016, Twitter started to release our emoji data to advertisers and it has been used since then to target our emotions to buy their goods. These 3 videos are meant to increase awareness of what is happening behind our screens and to help us make informed decisions, not to scare us into thinking that technology is bad. It’s not. We need to slow down in this race for connections and information and start to make very conscious choices instead of just trying out every new app that becomes available. SHOW LINKS: -It’s not you. Phones are designed to be addicting (video), part of Vox’s By Design Video series -TEDTalk by Tristan Harris, “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day” (video) -Tristan’s organization Center for Humane Technology - ”Why advertisers are tracking your emojis