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The Great Attention Heist

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Re: The Great Attention Heist

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as you can put your phone in your pocket, you can take off your AR lens. (At least until it's surgically implanted. Even then, it should still have a silent mode, just like your phone.)

The free version will come with ads. That you can't turn off. I'm not counting on a silent mode.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Maybe you should consider building the first implantable lens, so you can shape the way that the technology develops.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#82
post #49

We haven't seen nothing yet. Smartphone addiction is a thing, but at least you can put your phone in your pocket on silent and go on with your day. But AR lenses are coming and will be the next big thing in my opinion. Imagine being immersed in this semi-virtual world all day long. Imagine being a child and grow up in a world where these things are ubiquitous. Imagine what this will do to their attention.

Imagine the world a hundred years from now, where almost everything is presented as augmented reality, and where someone who doesn't have permanently augmented vision is seen as an outsider, much like the Amish today. Think about nothing being sold with a color or pattern anymore, because you can just customize it to whatever you want in your AR view. Think about products not having any sort of printed imagery, becau…

Bingo. Some time ago, I watched a video of Mark Zuckerberg at some VR conference and he said something like "VR is not about replacing reality. It's about making it better".

I mean, imagine the quality and realism of the AR/VR tech in 10, 20 or 30 years.

You can almost see some Black Mirror-esque scenario where the earth is overpopulated, resources are diminishing, there's less and less quality jobs, so why not upload your brain into a VR world, get rid of your physical body and live in this virtual paradise forever without having to work, pay taxes, without worrying about getting physically hurt, etc... The question is: are you still alive? Is it still "you" that is in this computer?

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#83
post #43

Just engaging with all the devices is a job in itself. Its very tough to focus. I keep all social media & news apps in a tablet that I refer to as the "time-killer". Controlling the alerts is a losing game. So, I just put all in a separate device. Even with browser, I have a separate profile that I use for HN & reddit. Even my phone is silent most of the times. I wish there was a answering machine app, so I can respo…

"Just engaging with all the devices is a job in itself. Its very tough to focus. I keep all social media & news apps in a tablet that I refer to as the "time-killer". Controlling the alerts is a losing game." I have manually disabled nearly all notifications on my phone, which works pretty well for me (but I think your isolation strategy sounds like a pretty good one, too).

Each time you update the OS or the app, it messes with the settings. So, since these things are designed to suck you in & the I am sure the developers deliberately overwrite the settings.

That is why I decided to have a separate device.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#84
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free version will come with ads. That you can't turn off. I'm not counting on a silent mode.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Maybe you should consider building the first implantable lens, so you can shape the way that the technology develops.

I don't have the money required to be a decision maker.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#85
post #25
post #3

Strikes me that the ability to focus and direct ones own attention will (or already has) become a new form of class divide; those who can concentrate and those who can't. And it will likely have much different boundaries than earlier class divisions like wealth - in fact the wealthy are more likely to struggle given greater access to a wide range of digital products.

It reminds me of Cal Newport's book Deep Work, where he argues those who can deliberately focus in the 21st century and actively deny themselves from being distracted (scheduled e-mail reading, banning Slack, only reading news certain times of the day) and go deep in subject matters will have massive advantages in the knowledge economy. The open office trend certainly hasn't helped. One of my friends who is a ML code…

I do something similar to the printing thing. I send interesting but long articles to Instapaper. Instapaper delivers them to my Kindle where I read the articles in my downtime.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#86
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the world a hundred years from now, where almost everything is presented as augmented reality, and where someone who doesn't have permanently augmented vision is seen as an outsider, much like the Amish today. Think about nothing being sold with a color or pattern anymore, because you can just customize it to whatever you want in your AR view. Think about products not having any sort of printed imagery, becau…

Bingo. Some time ago, I watched a video of Mark Zuckerberg at some VR conference and he said something like "VR is not about replacing reality. It's about making it better" . I mean, imagine the quality and realism of the AR/VR tech in 10, 20 or 30 years. You can almost see some Black Mirror-esque scenario where the earth is overpopulated, resources are diminishing, there's less and less quality jobs, so why not uplo…

That's the premise of one of my favorite, underrated SciFi books, Everyone in Silico[0]. It's also part of the premise of Ready Player One[1].

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Silico-Jim-Munroe-2002-11-22...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307...

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you use an ad blocker?

I am using uBlock Origin in Safari but it still appears. This is a smaller and more obscure site I don't expect a blacklist to be 100% effective.

huh. I'm on Firefox w/ uBlock and tested in Iridium, both blocked any popup.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#89
post #45
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get netflix. Binge watch for a month. Cancel. Repeat when you feel like and can afford.

That was exactly the point OP was making. For a poorer person, Netflix might be a few times a year splurge. What happens when an anticipated slow month turns busy? This person is torn between "wasting" $10 that they really can't afford to spend again next month or neglect other things in their life to get their money's worth this month.

I read him as saying, "have netflix always and always binge watch".
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