{"id":7316,"date":"2017-04-18T08:37:50","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T12:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=7316"},"modified":"2017-04-18T08:37:50","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T12:37:50","slug":"hacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=7316","title":{"rendered":"hacked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On Sunday, April 9th, CNN host and CBS correspondent Anderson Cooper presented the a piece on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d with the following lead in:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is \u2018brain hacking\u2019? Tech insiders on why you should care\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In a culture that continues to buy into this idea that Facebook is somehow authentic conversation, Snapchat is an accurate picture of one\u2019s life, and any of the above and other social media apps\/sites qualify as any kind of listening or dialogue, we should care about \u201cbrain hacking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper began: \u201cHave you ever wondered if all those people you see staring intently at their smartphones \u2014 nearly everywhere, and at all times \u2014 are addicted to them? According to a former Google product manager you are about to hear from, Silicon Valley is engineering your phone, apps and social media to get you hooked. He is one of the few tech insiders to publicly acknowledge that the companies responsible for programming your phones are working hard to get you and your family to feel the need to check in constantly. Some programmers call it \u2018brain hacking\u2019 and the tech world would probably prefer you didn\u2019t hear about it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Cooper proceeds to interview Tristan Harris, who according to CBS, \u201cwas living the Silicon Valley dream. He dropped out of a master\u2019s program at Stanford University to start a software company. Four years later Google bought him out and hired him as a product manager. It was while working there he started to feel overwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Harris: \u201cHonestly, I was just bombarded in email and calendar invitations and just the overload of what it\u2019s like to work at a place like Google. And I was asking, \u2018When is all of this adding up to, like, an actual benefit to my life?\u2019 And I ended up making this presentation. It was kind of a manifesto. And it basically said, you know, \u2018Look, never before in history have a handful of people at a handful of technology companies shaped how a billion people think and feel every day with the choices they make about these screens.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Harris put together a 144-page presentation for Google execs arguing that the constant distractions of apps and emails are \u201cweakening our relationships to each other\u201d and \u201cdestroying our kids ability to focus.\u201d With little change, Harris decided to quit three years later.<\/p>\n

Again, said Harris: \u201cIt\u2019s not because anyone is evil or has bad intentions. It\u2019s because the game is getting attention at all costs. And the problem is it becomes this race to the bottom of the brainstem, where if I go lower on the brainstem to get you, you know, using my product, I win. But it doesn\u2019t end up in the world we want to live in. We don\u2019t end up feeling good about how we\u2019re using all this stuff.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Tristan Harris says the only thing the apps and sites and their developers want is our attention. The longer they hold our attention, the more money they make. (Question: know why texts and Facebook use a continuous scroll? It\u2019s a proven way to keep us searching longer.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Note that as Cooper\u2019s report continues, one psychologist says that the typical person checks their phone every 15 minutes or less \u2014 and \u2014 \u201chalf of the time they check their phone there is no alert, no notification.\u201d We are checking into Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. We are checking in on \u2014 and investing in \u2014 things that are not people.<\/p>\n

Let me attempt to be more clear\u2026<\/p>\n

We are spending more and more time on our apps. We are often using them to connect with other people, thus potentially investing in relationship.<\/p>\n

However, we are mistaking these connections for authentic communication.<\/p>\n

We are mistaking status updates and opinion sharing as good, give-and-take dialogue.<\/p>\n

And thus, we are mistaking social media for being a solid investment in other people.<\/p>\n

Seems like we are doing a lot of mistaking.<\/p>\n

As the tech industry prioritizes grabbing our attention, the reality is that such will pull our attention away from someone or something else. Hence, it\u2019s not only our brains which are being hacked; it\u2019s our relationships, too.<\/p>\n

Respectfully\u2026
\nAR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, April 9th, CNN host and CBS correspondent Anderson Cooper presented the a piece on \u201c60 Minutes\u201d with the following lead in: \u201cWhat is \u2018brain hacking\u2019? Tech insiders on why you should care\u2026\u201d In a culture that continues to buy into this idea that Facebook is somehow authentic conversation, Snapchat is an accurate picture … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “hacked”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event","category-daily-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7319,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7316\/revisions\/7319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}