Social Media Analysis #2 - Driven By Tech Distraction

Harris, T. 2014. How Better Tech Could Protect Us From Distraction. Ted Talk.

Premise

The premise is how to get a choice from our technology.  The idea is that social media is bulldozing our attention and we have conditioned ourselves to be driven to be distracted.  He brings up the concept that you are either "on" or off and having a fear of missing out.  It's not just coworkers, but we end up distracting ourselves in the process.

That we need help with the way technology designing technology 

According to the presenter it takes about 23 minutes to return to a state 

I did a sweep to cross-reference his info and think I found the original source below: 

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf

It works under the idea of the highest quality level of communication between two people.

Examples

While there are many examples used an analog of slot machines as they are a similar level of social distraction when it comes to social media.

His main counterexample was the use of couch surfing.   Instead of matching guests with hosts, the instead say they designed to create lasting positive experiences and relationships between strangers.

It then presents a metric where you take the number of days and then subtract the number of positive hours in those days.  Then you divide how positive in this experience and then subtract a number of hours spent on the website. This is the net "good times" created between strangers.

Interest and Appeal

It's a good idea, but we already have the tools in question: The urgent button.  Unless we have common ground with concern with the messaging, the tools won't matter.  His metrics seem a little subjective, to put it mildly.  and there are a bit of Orwellian undertones and a threat of the old Doctor Who Happiness Patrol to all this.

Here's a synopsis of the later for your own education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Patrol

His very example shows the weakness in his argument.  The use of organic is mainly a marketing term as there isn't any regulation on the term itself.  Plus the actual term organics is mainly used to reduce overall food production and to create hysteria to scare people from using genetic alternatives that will save lives (ex. golden rice) due to fear and the mob mentality.

Impact of Talk

From a marketing perspective, the best thing is to create a socially conscious term and use it for marketing purposes. Ultimately it's about presenting a good experience and one that provides a specific focus.

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So what are your thoughts?

Is the technology possible by reducing distraction and developing closer relationships, or is it a pipe dream?.

Feel free to leave a comment below.  I'm curious about your feedback.

#socialmedia #technology #distraction