What might be a viable response to the attention crisis? Persuasive technology that’s on your team.
"I used to think there were no great political struggles left. How wrong I was. The liberation of human attention may be the defining moral and political struggle of our time. Its success is the prerequisite for the success of virtually all other struggles." — James Williams
Attention is the prerequisite for everything else we do in life. The systematic exploitation of human attention undermines the basis of human freedom and dignity.
Persuasive information technologies are conditioning environments for billions of people despite an explicit antagonism to those users’ wellbeing. In its escalating arms race to extract attention, limbic capitalism undermines our mental health, diminishes our agency, and handicaps human development. All at a time when the world faces unprecedented catastrophic risks threatening the very possibility of a human civilization in the first place.
If we are to carry the light of human consciousness forward, if we are to regenerate the ecological basis for life on earth, if we are to succeed at any of our struggles — we need to reclaim our attention.
This document shows that there is an opportunity to liberate human attention by reimagining human-computer interaction in the face of persuasive technology, attention scarcity, and the intention-action gap. It outlines the design criteria for humane technology, articulates the essential role of intentionality, and introduces the vision behind Potential:
Persuasive technology that’s on your team.
By now many of us understand the problems with persuasive technology. An ad-revenue business model makes attention extraction the name of the game. As a result, trillion-dollar companies are armed with weapons-grade mind-control tech aimed at isolated individuals who have no idea what they’re up against. Ubiquitous mental health crises, problematic smartphone use, and societal degradation are predictable consequences.
“What do you pay when you pay attention? You pay with all the things you could have attended to, but didn’t: all the goals you didn’t pursue, all the actions you didn’t take, and all the possible yous you could have been, had you attended to those other things. Attention is paid in possible futures foregone.” — James Williams