Modest Conversations - The Information 29 - Attention and Addiction & What To Actually Do About It - Tristan Harris Fmr. Google
Nov 5, 2017
Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and critic of the attention economy, discusses modern persuasive design and digital addiction. He explains how immersion, social persuasion, AI personalization, and device defaults amplify attention capture. They explore harms to shared reality, risks for kids, and bold fixes like attention taxes, humane defaults, and conversational interfaces.
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Design Ethics Shapes Digital Influence
- Tristan Harris maps how tech manipulates human minds by combining evolutionary biases with design patterns.
- He argues companies must decide what goods they should be manipulating toward, not just how to manipulate.
Four Factors Make Persuasion Hyper‑Powerful
- Harris identifies four novel features that make modern persuasion qualitatively different and more dangerous.
- He names immersive screens, social persuasion, AI optimization, and personal targeting as the key changes.
Attention Optimization Shreds Shared Reality
- Optimizing for attention creates a reinforcement loop that amplifies prediction and manipulation.
- That loop not only drives addiction but can shred shared reality and fracture society into separate realities.
