33: The Joy of Breaking Free, with James Williams

The JOMOcast with Christina Crook

“I can never underestimate the creativity of people who want to take part of your life and monetize it.”
Summary
James Williams is the author of “Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy,” and cofounder of the ‘Time Well Spent’ campaign, a project that aims to steer technology design toward having greater respect for users’ attention, goals, and values.
Previously, James worked for over ten years at Google, where he received the Founder’s Award, the company’s highest honor. He is also a frequent speaker, consultant for companies and governments, and commentator on technology issues in the media.In this episode, James shares his firsthand experience of the inner workings of the attention economy and habit-forming technology, and his motivations to craft his passionate message for us to find a better way.
Key Takeaways:

• It was designed this way. Social media and every facet of digital marketing, overt and covert, are designed to manipulate our emotions and maximize their hold on our attention- and its creators, when pressed, admit it.
• The current generation of online technology, such as smartphones and social media, is intended to shape us as consumers. The business incentives that modern consumer technology create specifically incentivize the invention of systems that steer human behavior and shape our psyches in ways that favor their profitability.
• Taking intentional, mindful control of our inputs is central to improving our individual situations. The fundamental source of nearly all harm from new media is the information overwhelm and the overconnectedness that disrupts our natural human instincts to find meaning and form bonds. The only solution is to change the dynamic to one of strictly thoughtful, rather than passive, consumption.

Favorite Quotes:
“As the Web matured, and these tech titans emerged… I saw that we were doing the same thing as before the internet… persuasion and manipulation as the business model amped up times a million because of the algorithmic logic and proliferation of data of everything we know about human psychology.”
“The core thing these platforms are doing… is shaping the human will and charting people’s paths through their lives.”
“The technologies that play the dirtiest are going to get the greatest part of our attention.”
“In terms of the sustainability of the attention economy, I don’t know if it worries me more whether it’s sustainable or unsustainable.”
--
jomocast.com
Support
This podcast is made possible by you — our listeners all over the world — from Brazil to Australia, the USA to Singapore. Please support the JOMO(cast) for just $3 a month at patreon.com/jomocast.
Christina Crook
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cmcrook
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thechristinacrook
Credits
Hosted by Christina Crook
Produced by Christina Crook and Thomas J Indge
Editing and Music by Thomas J Indge

---

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.