Fighting Attention Fracking

Renaissance Humans, #49

Whenever I see people in public gazing down into their phones, my first thought is how stupid they look.

Then, half a second later, comes the dawning realization that’s also how I look.

Devices by Erin Pollock

I don’t know why exactly I feel looking at a phone is different than a newspaper or a book.

You could be reading Shakespeare on there, or learning Calculus.

And there’s plenty of examples of people getting sucked into the communication medium of the day.

I should begin by acknowledging some things.

1. The smartphone isn’t going anywhere. It’s an integral part of contemporary life.

2. The smartphone, coupled with the nonlinear potentiality of social media, is legitimately a miracle, a modern wonder, with more processing power than the craft that took humans to the moon.

3. With a smartphone, an individual human is empowered with a platform for speech, knowledge-seeking, self-development, creativity, entertainment, economic ability, and straight up agency over their lives. That is huge.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

As we know from reading/watching/listening to our McLuhan, Harrises (Tristan and Sam), and Schmactenberger, Technology is Not Neutral. It brings of whole host of 2nd and 3rd order effects with it. Just watch a few nightmare-fuel episodes of Black Mirror.

There is a morality built into a new technology that we might not notice in our day to day grind.¹

Our Attentional Oligarchs

What Is To Be Done

There is a spectrum of views on how to address our attentional predicament. The bottom up method is championed by Nir Eyal, who promotes developing our individual self-discipline. Tristan Harris embodies the other end — we have to systematically change these structures of commodified attention from the top down. The answer is likely in the middle— humans cultivate self-discipline within such an environment, and we alter the incentives/conditions.

Author Neal Stephenson discusses the concept of Amistics in his novel Seveneves. It is a brilliant novel² I found impossible to put down. Amistics is introduced as a deliberate cultural practice in which a society limits or avoids certain advanced technologies, even when they are technically available. The term is derived from "amish," referencing the Amish community's selective approach to adopting technology.

Ruth Gastovski’s work on Substack explores how we can keep our relationship with technology in a proportion that serves our humanity, rather than exploits:

Frack It

The term fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, entered public consciousness in the early 2000s. It refers to a process used to extract oil and natural gas from deep underground rock formations, and involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into the ground to create small fractures in the rock. This allows trapped oil or gas to flow more freely to the surface, and thus feed the ravenous maw of the carbon pulse.

In Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy³, former Google employee James Williams uses the phrase attention fracking as a metaphor to describe how the attention economy extracts and exploits humans in a manner similar to how fracking extracts natural resources.⁴

Lately, I’ve been getting the smartphone out of my pocket.

I am collecting digital hygiene ideas—those choices about technology use more conducive to flourishing.

I’m not getting rid of my phone.

I just want to move it one step away. I can still use it if it’s in my bag, but it’s just a little more difficult.

The following are some general best practices I’ve been working on. Each will find their own equilibrium point.

Options to mitigate Attention Fracking on your Smartphone:

Bottom line: Make. It. Boring.

1. Delete ALL social media from your device. For me, this means (gasp, shudder, move to the fainting couch) even the Substack app. That hurt. This includes apps like Slack and Discord. Put it on your laptop or desktop.

2. Delete Apps. If you haven’t used in awhile, get rid of them. As Taylor Swift always says, simplify, simplify, simplify.⁵

3. Remove games. Take a hard look at the games you have downloaded and decide if they’re worth the cost of being there.

4. Turn off all notifications for apps and communication. Turn off access to contacts, microphone, and camera for apps that don’t need them. Mute text/Whatsapp/Signal threads that aren’t from one of your inner Dunbar rings of intimates.

5. Use Adaptive Assist. Per Apple: Assistive Access is a distinctive iOS experience that makes it easier for people with cognitive disabilities to use iPhone independently. Essential apps and experiences have been optimized for Assistive Access—onscreen items are bigger, features are more focused, and it’s easier to navigate and understand what actions are possible.

6. Use Grayscale⁶. Make it boring. Boring, boring, boring.

7. Get it out of the bedroom. Charge it downstairs. The bed is for a nice fiction book. Hurkle durkle with a book, not a phone. Hit me up if you need a recommendation.

Options for getting the smartphone out of your pocket:

1. Smart Watch. I’ve been experimenting with leaving the house just with a cell-chip enabled apple watch and airpods. This gives you telephone, text, music, podcasts, and maps. You can walk around without a phone. Dick Tracy has finally come to fruition, after a century.

   

2. Light Phone. Minimalist, Kindle-like in black and white appearance; provides maps, podcasts, music, talk, and text. And it can hotspot for your laptop.

3. Dumb Phone. Less is more.

4. No Phone. The nuclear option.

There’s no one size fits all answer.

Each of us will find our own equilibrium point.

I believe if we adopt some of these digital hygiene practices, we mitigate attentional fracking.

We create the conditions for critical thinking, processing emotions, and contemplation⁷.

For Deep Work.

For finding your Flow.

For taking back your attentional sovereignty.

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Currere Certamen Tuum

1. One example Schachtenberger gives is about the invention of the plow, and how it necessitated the use of animals to pull it, which then required a change in our beliefs about the world— from animist to a view comfortable exploiting animals. From the Center For Humane Tech, Harris and Raskin propose the following rules: 1. When we invent a new technology, we uncover a new class of responsibility. 2. If that new technology confers power, it will start a race. 3. If we don’t coordinate, the race will end in tragedy.

2. The novel begins with the sudden disintegration of Earth's moon, triggering a chain of events that will render Earth uninhabitable due to a "Hard Rain" of meteoric debris. Humanity's only hope for survival lies in creating a space-based refuge, forcing nations and individuals to collaborate under immense pressure. The story follows the struggles, ingenuity, and sacrifices of those who undertake this task, focusing on both the immediate crisis and its long-term repercussions. Spanning thousands of years, Seveneves explores themes of resilience, technology, genetic engineering, and the reinvention of humanity as the remnants of Earth’s population evolve and adapt in the harshness of space.

3. And of course, “Stand Out of Our Light” is a sweet Diogenes reference, from his epic comeback to Alexander.

4. I haven’t touched on surveillance capitalism, another facet of the problem.

5. Henry David Thoreau.

6. Thanks to my friend Don Mullen for suggesting this one.

7. In ancient Rome, a templum described a consecrated area set apart for observing omens, often in the sky. Contemplari originally meant "observe carefully within a designated space," especially in a sacred or reflective context. Over time, the meaning broadened to signify deep, focused observation or reflection, not just in a religious sense but in intellectual and personal introspection.