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meglybcoul's review
5.0
As a UX designer, I’ve often found myself wondering about the ethics of what I do but unsure how to describe why I felt so uncomfortable. This book does a good job of describing it.
soofka's review against another edition
3.0
“ What do you pay when you pay attention? You pay with all the things you could have attended to, but didn’t”
I give this book a 2.5 because what the author says is essential knowledge. Something that every member of this society should be aware of, but it’s written in an exaggerated academic way, making it relatively boring.
Furthermore the book starts in a great way but as the chapters proceed, it looses content and ends with banal solutions, which I find almost impractical.
I give this book a 2.5 because what the author says is essential knowledge. Something that every member of this society should be aware of, but it’s written in an exaggerated academic way, making it relatively boring.
Furthermore the book starts in a great way but as the chapters proceed, it looses content and ends with banal solutions, which I find almost impractical.
nohadon's review against another edition
3.75
A wonderful analysis of the attention scarcity present today that humanity has never faced before. A tad too much academia speak and leaving half baked ideas weakens the premise of this book. Read Stolen Focus instead for a more gripping and journalistically sound account of the attention scarcity present in today’s world.
Read this if you want the raw philosophical source of the ideas.
Read this if you want the raw philosophical source of the ideas.
bookcreek's review against another edition
3.5
The author rightly places the responsibility on the tech companies and the advertising industry for exploiting people. However, three-quarters of the book wouldn't offer any new information to a modern reader. I wish he'd delve deeper into the underlying factors of attention deficiency instead of just glossing over them to cover case studies and data that everybody else who writes on this topic is covering
lhgluke's review against another edition
3.0
Having ADHD and always fighting against services/devices which are trying to suck up all of my available attention, I was excited to read this and try to learn how and why our attention is being stolen, and how to do something about it.
James does a good job of explaining the how and why, but drops the ball on the actions to take - and to be fair, he does state that he is trying to mainly start the conversation rather than provide all of the solutions, but the few solutions he does provide were a bit lackluster in my opinion - for example an oath for web developers to take akin to the Hippocratic oath seems a bit silly to me personally, but well intended.
I was very interested in the how though, and James sums it up quite well:
1. Spotlight (our immediate attention - like the next notification on your phone)
2. Starlight (our focus on mid-term goals - like health, personal growth)
3. Sunlight (our focus on values - how we'd like to be, how we'd like to impact the world)
Having recently completed a course on how to manage ADHD, I can see similarities here, such as lettings your values guide you and your actions rather than your thoughts and emotions, so it's interesting to see the crossroads of mindfulness/psychotherapy and companies squeezing you for more ad revenue while giving you a quick hit of dopamine in return.
My biggest complaint is the unnecessary use of, for want of a better term, "big words". This is alongside a *lot* of stats, figures, market research results etc. Considering it's a book about paying attention, it became quite hard to pay attention to, especially from about the halfway mark onwards.
I loved the beginning with the stories and comparisons to Diogenes and the like, those are the things that drew me in and kept me reading ahead. Towards the halfway mark it seemed like I was reading a scientific peer review paper, and I struggled to want to finish - although I did as it was a short book an I was curious of what solutions might be put forward.
Interesting and worth reading if you notice your attention is being dragged around everyday and want to know why and how it's happening, but just don't expect a breezy read, or the solutions to solve the problem.
James does a good job of explaining the how and why, but drops the ball on the actions to take - and to be fair, he does state that he is trying to mainly start the conversation rather than provide all of the solutions, but the few solutions he does provide were a bit lackluster in my opinion - for example an oath for web developers to take akin to the Hippocratic oath seems a bit silly to me personally, but well intended.
I was very interested in the how though, and James sums it up quite well:
1. Spotlight (our immediate attention - like the next notification on your phone)
2. Starlight (our focus on mid-term goals - like health, personal growth)
3. Sunlight (our focus on values - how we'd like to be, how we'd like to impact the world)
Having recently completed a course on how to manage ADHD, I can see similarities here, such as lettings your values guide you and your actions rather than your thoughts and emotions, so it's interesting to see the crossroads of mindfulness/psychotherapy and companies squeezing you for more ad revenue while giving you a quick hit of dopamine in return.
My biggest complaint is the unnecessary use of, for want of a better term, "big words". This is alongside a *lot* of stats, figures, market research results etc. Considering it's a book about paying attention, it became quite hard to pay attention to, especially from about the halfway mark onwards.
I loved the beginning with the stories and comparisons to Diogenes and the like, those are the things that drew me in and kept me reading ahead. Towards the halfway mark it seemed like I was reading a scientific peer review paper, and I struggled to want to finish - although I did as it was a short book an I was curious of what solutions might be put forward.
Interesting and worth reading if you notice your attention is being dragged around everyday and want to know why and how it's happening, but just don't expect a breezy read, or the solutions to solve the problem.
branch_c's review against another edition
5.0
The attention economy and its ill effects are now starting to get the focus they deserve, but in case anyone hasn’t followed the commentary from Tristan Harris or seen the 2020 documentary “The Social Dilemma”, this book is a brilliant and engaging presentation of the material in a way that’s compelling and enjoyable to read.
I came across Williams as a keynote speaker at an upcoming conference on persuasive technology, and the description of this book seemed exactly the kind of statement I’d like to see made. The book is from 2018, yet somehow I hadn’t come across it in my survey of literature on the subject.
With its extensive quoting of historical thinkers from Rousseau to Adam Smith to Huxley, the book makes it clear that the issue has been around for a lot longer than smartphones have. But current technology represents the concerns of those who came before us actually being realized. As Williams notes, “Designers began applying techniques and infrastructures developed for digital advertising to advance persuasive goals in the platforms and services themselves.” (p. 28)
And Williams introduces some thoughtful philosophy of his own, asking questions about identity, democracy, and polarization, as well as, of course, influence, persuasion, and coercion. The key point is that “... the dynamics of the attention economy are thus structurally set up to undermine the most noble aims and virtues worth pursuing.” (p. 80)
Because we all like to believe that we freely choose what we do with our time and attention, it may sound extreme to say that “...the competition for attention and the ‘persuasion’ of users ultimately amounts to a project of the manipulation of the will” and that “At individual levels, these problems threaten to frustrate one’s authorship of one’s own life.” (p. 88) but Williams makes a persuasive (!) case that this is what’s happening. And in the case of persuasive user interfaces, we may not even be aware of it.
The book is not perfect - the title, for example, was taken from an alleged encounter between the philosopher Diogenes and Alexander the Great. The analogy drawn by Williams casts the well-intentioned Alexander as the technology that offers so much promise, and suggests that we should respond as Diogenes did, telling Alexander that he was blocking his light. Apparently Diogenes had a reputation for being unconventional - not to say an obnoxious troll exactly... but anyway, I’m not sure I like the idea of being cast in the role of this cynical character. It’s not asking too much to expect that we can find a better way to respond to the situation.
Williams also takes pains to say that “...we cannot put the blame for these problems on the designers of the technologies themselves. No one becomes a designer or engineer because they want to make people’s lives worse.” (p. 102). That may be true, but software developers are not stupid, and each one who finds himself or herself in the position of being asked to build software whose purpose is persuade users to click on ads surely recognizes that this is not an ethical use of their talent, and can choose not to do it. Might that result in a loss of income? Sure; no one is saying that being ethical is the easy thing to do, just that it’s the right thing.
As for the solutions that Williams proposes, he suggests four angles of approach, with the first being to reassess the nature and purpose of advertising. As he says, “Advertising ethics has never really guided or restrained the practice of advertising in any meaningful way: it’s been a sleepy, tokenistic undertaking. Why has this been so? In short, because advertisers have found ethics threatening, and ethicists have found advertising boring.” (p. 109) I think he’s absolutely right about this, and while he points out that advertising is not the only root cause of the problem, it’s certainly one of the most important.
The remaining suggestions involve “...conceptual and linguistic reengineering, ... changing the upstream determinants of design, and ... advancing mechanisms for accountability, transparency, and measurement.” (p. 108) The discussion of these items comes across as a bit more technical and less forceful than I’d have preferred - but further work in these areas seems promising.
Personally I’d like to think it comes back to the individual ethics of each person involved, as I mentioned earlier. Williams quotes Facebook research scientist Jeff Hammerbacher as saying “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads ...and it sucks.” (p. 30) There’s obviously a financial incentive for this, and ideally incentives can be changed, but individual choice in the face of those incentives can also be a step in the right direction.
I would recommend this book to anyone, but I particularly hope that my fellow software development professionals will read it. We are literally creating a new society with the technology that we design, and we get to decide what kind of society we want it to be. We need to recognize that “We have neither reason nor obligation to accept a relationship with technology that is adversarial in nature.” (p.100)
I read an electronic version of this book, available free of charge online from the publisher, Cambridge University Press (but I may follow up and buy a hard copy in support of the author and his important message).
I came across Williams as a keynote speaker at an upcoming conference on persuasive technology, and the description of this book seemed exactly the kind of statement I’d like to see made. The book is from 2018, yet somehow I hadn’t come across it in my survey of literature on the subject.
With its extensive quoting of historical thinkers from Rousseau to Adam Smith to Huxley, the book makes it clear that the issue has been around for a lot longer than smartphones have. But current technology represents the concerns of those who came before us actually being realized. As Williams notes, “Designers began applying techniques and infrastructures developed for digital advertising to advance persuasive goals in the platforms and services themselves.” (p. 28)
And Williams introduces some thoughtful philosophy of his own, asking questions about identity, democracy, and polarization, as well as, of course, influence, persuasion, and coercion. The key point is that “... the dynamics of the attention economy are thus structurally set up to undermine the most noble aims and virtues worth pursuing.” (p. 80)
Because we all like to believe that we freely choose what we do with our time and attention, it may sound extreme to say that “...the competition for attention and the ‘persuasion’ of users ultimately amounts to a project of the manipulation of the will” and that “At individual levels, these problems threaten to frustrate one’s authorship of one’s own life.” (p. 88) but Williams makes a persuasive (!) case that this is what’s happening. And in the case of persuasive user interfaces, we may not even be aware of it.
The book is not perfect - the title, for example, was taken from an alleged encounter between the philosopher Diogenes and Alexander the Great. The analogy drawn by Williams casts the well-intentioned Alexander as the technology that offers so much promise, and suggests that we should respond as Diogenes did, telling Alexander that he was blocking his light. Apparently Diogenes had a reputation for being unconventional - not to say an obnoxious troll exactly... but anyway, I’m not sure I like the idea of being cast in the role of this cynical character. It’s not asking too much to expect that we can find a better way to respond to the situation.
Williams also takes pains to say that “...we cannot put the blame for these problems on the designers of the technologies themselves. No one becomes a designer or engineer because they want to make people’s lives worse.” (p. 102). That may be true, but software developers are not stupid, and each one who finds himself or herself in the position of being asked to build software whose purpose is persuade users to click on ads surely recognizes that this is not an ethical use of their talent, and can choose not to do it. Might that result in a loss of income? Sure; no one is saying that being ethical is the easy thing to do, just that it’s the right thing.
As for the solutions that Williams proposes, he suggests four angles of approach, with the first being to reassess the nature and purpose of advertising. As he says, “Advertising ethics has never really guided or restrained the practice of advertising in any meaningful way: it’s been a sleepy, tokenistic undertaking. Why has this been so? In short, because advertisers have found ethics threatening, and ethicists have found advertising boring.” (p. 109) I think he’s absolutely right about this, and while he points out that advertising is not the only root cause of the problem, it’s certainly one of the most important.
The remaining suggestions involve “...conceptual and linguistic reengineering, ... changing the upstream determinants of design, and ... advancing mechanisms for accountability, transparency, and measurement.” (p. 108) The discussion of these items comes across as a bit more technical and less forceful than I’d have preferred - but further work in these areas seems promising.
Personally I’d like to think it comes back to the individual ethics of each person involved, as I mentioned earlier. Williams quotes Facebook research scientist Jeff Hammerbacher as saying “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads ...and it sucks.” (p. 30) There’s obviously a financial incentive for this, and ideally incentives can be changed, but individual choice in the face of those incentives can also be a step in the right direction.
I would recommend this book to anyone, but I particularly hope that my fellow software development professionals will read it. We are literally creating a new society with the technology that we design, and we get to decide what kind of society we want it to be. We need to recognize that “We have neither reason nor obligation to accept a relationship with technology that is adversarial in nature.” (p.100)
I read an electronic version of this book, available free of charge online from the publisher, Cambridge University Press (but I may follow up and buy a hard copy in support of the author and his important message).
themorsecode's review against another edition
4.0
There's nothing particularly ground-breaking here for those who've read around this subject, but the book is very well written and accessible whilst touching upon weighty ideas.
I like William's linguistic analysis of the "information age" and how we're ill-equipped to combat or process much of the internet as we're working with out-moded tools. A longer book could have investigated that further.
Not convinced by all the posited solutions to the new attention economy but this makes for a good, freely available and short starting point to investigate further.
I like William's linguistic analysis of the "information age" and how we're ill-equipped to combat or process much of the internet as we're working with out-moded tools. A longer book could have investigated that further.
Not convinced by all the posited solutions to the new attention economy but this makes for a good, freely available and short starting point to investigate further.
mwasson's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0