Nicolay Hvidsten's Reviews > Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again

I fundamentally agree with this book's central thesis:

Your attention is being fragmented and your political views are radicalised through the Outrage Economy by large tech monopolies beholden to Surveillance Capitalism, particularly Twitter.

However, Hari's narrative raised some red flags. In short, he seemed entirely blind to his own ideological blind spots, and thus I found myself highly skeptical of many of his claims. I was about to write a review to this effect, but it turned out someone already had.

So instead, I'll link to some books I think explains/remedies the problems diagnosed by Hari (his own solutions strike me, perhaps unsurprisingly, as something a Terminally Online journalist would cook up):

1. The loss of focus/flow can be remedied by embracing the practice of Deep Work. Or, as Steven Pressfield would put it: Trusting the Soup.

2. Sleep is incredibly important. For some reason Hari didn't interview Matthew Walker, whose book, Why We Sleep, is essentially the Sleep Bible.

3. The anxiety and stress introduced by social media can be alleviated by (1) deleting social media, (2) meditation, and (3) application of Stoic principles. I hardly think (1) needs its own book, but The Power of Now and Meditations are good primers on the latter two points. I am sympathetic to the point that these techniques will not save those with genuinely stressful lives (like the American working class), but I hardly think social media is their main problem.

4. Unlike Hari, I don't think handing the political levers of social media to politicians is a good idea. I think my views are vindicated by Twitter's excessive censorship of non-progressive views and the Democratic Party's recent effort to create a literal Ministry of Truth. For a Left-wing perspective on how the only sane political party in the U.S. became a neoliberal bastion of the Professional Class, I strongly recommend Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream and Frank's Listen, Liberal

5. And finally I think modern media (on both the Left and the Right) are a direct contributor to the political polarisation, and not just social media. Unlike Hari I don't consider The Guardian, NYT, or even the BBC any more unbiased than their conservative counterparts. There are countless articles about this from world-class journalists, but Matt Taibbi's book, Hate Inc, explains it best.

In short, this book read like a dope fiend trying to kick his own addiction. He makes a good case, he's an addict after all so he recognises there's a problem, but his solutions are badly tinted by his illness.