Ep. 159 - Reclaiming Attention

Too many of us spend too much time on our phones. We know by now—through whistleblower reports, congressional hearings, and our daily lived experience—that these devices, neutral in themselves, can and often do cause serious harm. Can we learn to live without them again? Would we even want to? On this episode, D. Graham Burnett, a professor of the history of science at Princeton and co-author, with the Friends of Attention, of the new book Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, speaks with associate editor Regina Munch about how we got into this predicament, and where we should go. Burnett argues that before we can answer questions like those, we first need to understand how major tech firms have used “human fracking” to amass billions of dollars in profit. Resistance, Burnett says, is indeed possible: we can take back our brains, and our lives, but only if we’re willing to fight for the human activities and habits of mind that nourish real connections with ourselves and others. For further reading: Alexander Stern on AI and the crisis of meaning Antonio Spadaro on Pope Leo’s critique of Silicon Valley Antón Barba-Kay on how the concept of attention has evolved