Humans are intensely distracted by their screens. There can be no quibbling about this fact. Some of us hate that, some of us like it and some of us are too distracted to have noticed. There’s distracted driving, distracted parenting, distracted cooking, distracted bowling, distracted sex, distracted power tool use, distracted gold farming, distracted brain surgery, distracted bowel movements … And with the latest iOS update, it’s even possible to get distracted while being distracted, switching from mid-completed task to mid-completed task and then, uh, let’s see … what was I saying? Oh yeah.Here’s the rub: it’s not just the humans: it’s the devices themselves. They are constantly indexing, updating, percolating, predicting, geo-targeting, cross-referencing and upselling you when all you want them to do is let you finish typing that email about LOLcats or pay your credit card bill or show you the exact web page you typed into the browser address bar and not some other bullshit results or App Store suggestion or … well, gee, maybe I will install that app. Oh shit, I have to agree to the new Terms of Service … and, damn, it’s not taking my password. Oh there we go, but now the credit card info needs updating and, uh, what app was this again?
Distracted Devices
No Wonder You Can’t Concentrate On Anything
2 min read
