Chrissy's Share: Books & Screens

It's fascinating to read this while observing the people in my own life. It is tragic to see screen addictions stealing away attention spans. I especially liked the term in this article "feeds vs focus". It will be very interesting to see the impact on younger generations who have spent their whole lives being influenced by algorithms made to whittle away at us. I've been trying recently to be more intentional with how I consume content online, and I've found that it has been helping, and I hope that we can shift towards that as a norm, rather than a novelty.

Wow THANK YOU!! Finally a refreshing narrative on this topic! You all know by not that I take notes when I read or listen to your content - here’s what I’ve written on my digital sticky notes:

“Socrates worried that writing would ‘produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory.’ He feared readers would ‘seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant’, and warned about confusion and moral disorientation.”

“We built a world that profits from distraction and then pathologise the distracted.”

“We don’t struggle with video versus books. We struggle with feeds versus focus. One happens in an ecosystem designed for contemplation, the other in a casino designed for endless pull-to-refresh.”

“Your inability to focus isn’t a moral failing. It’s a design problem. You’re trying to think in environments built to prevent thinking. You’re trying to sustain attention in spaces engineered to shatter it. You’re fighting algorithms explicitly optimised to keep you scrolling, not learning.”

“The solution isn’t discipline. It’s architecture. Build different defaults. Create different spaces. Establish different rhythms. Make depth as easy as distraction currently is. Make thinking feel as natural as scrolling currently does.”

“The elegant lamenters offer a eulogy. I’m more interested in a fight.”