I loved that you called attention to this Vice quote: "application of knowledge to work being about the application of attention"
This nails it! In those increasingly rote roles, performed throughout the world by hundreds of millions of people, your job is NOT to think. It is to pay attention.
Your "job" on social media, from the platform's perspective, is also to pay attention. It doesn't matter if you're happy, outraged, depressed..... just pay attention, no matter the negative implication.
(also, thank you so much for the mention! I hope some of your readers gain value from an additional, complimentary perspective)
As a semi-aside, the body can only take so much of this (Michael and Anna). Over time pain becomes a real issue and there'll be no thinking/abstracting your way through that. Have spent some years fighting through some truly painful and at times semi-crippling tendonitis from the body positions all this technology has us assume. It's feels kind of amazing that it's gone now. How to keep it away? Yeah, respect the body and exercise. Also I'm just like you with the typing and I think it's because the body's involved (and with it a different part of the mind).
“My friend Dana and I, circa 1999 at our job in the early DotCom heyday in NYC when we wrote book blurbs and IMed each other giggling just few feet apart all the lifelong day, had her mom calling us from home every 20 minutes to remind us to look away from the screen. The rule of 20s will save your sight: Look for 20 seconds 20 feet into the distance every 20 minutes.”
How lovely to recognize myself but even more my mom! I honestly forgot she used to do that for us. But she did, you remember!
I loved that you called attention to this Vice quote: "application of knowledge to work being about the application of attention"
This nails it! In those increasingly rote roles, performed throughout the world by hundreds of millions of people, your job is NOT to think. It is to pay attention.
Your "job" on social media, from the platform's perspective, is also to pay attention. It doesn't matter if you're happy, outraged, depressed..... just pay attention, no matter the negative implication.
(also, thank you so much for the mention! I hope some of your readers gain value from an additional, complimentary perspective)
As a semi-aside, the body can only take so much of this (Michael and Anna). Over time pain becomes a real issue and there'll be no thinking/abstracting your way through that. Have spent some years fighting through some truly painful and at times semi-crippling tendonitis from the body positions all this technology has us assume. It's feels kind of amazing that it's gone now. How to keep it away? Yeah, respect the body and exercise. Also I'm just like you with the typing and I think it's because the body's involved (and with it a different part of the mind).
“My friend Dana and I, circa 1999 at our job in the early DotCom heyday in NYC when we wrote book blurbs and IMed each other giggling just few feet apart all the lifelong day, had her mom calling us from home every 20 minutes to remind us to look away from the screen. The rule of 20s will save your sight: Look for 20 seconds 20 feet into the distance every 20 minutes.”
How lovely to recognize myself but even more my mom! I honestly forgot she used to do that for us. But she did, you remember!
You are such a talented writer, and you are putting those talents to fantastic use with this blog!