The Unintended Consequences of Technology

CHAPTER 14 Restart: The Most Powerful Vote We Have: The Ballot, Money, or Attention?

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to think about the kind of future we want. The way things are going, this “computer called life” we are currently running nonstop needs a restart! If we are to have even a chance at saving our species and our planet, technology development, deployment, and usage all need a restart.

It's very easy to feel powerless in the face of the many never-ending streams of unintended consequences of technology, but you are not powerless. We all have a role to play. Our power and influence are in our “vote.” Allow me to explain. There are three types of votes:

• Voting with our attention
• Voting at the ballot box
• Voting by spending money (otherwise known as spending power)

Most human beings have at least one of these three ABM (attention/ballot box/money) powers.

VOTING WITH OUR ATTENTION

If I ask you to think of the most valuable commodity that you have, chances are good that attention isn't the first thing that would come to mind. But to companies all around the world, there's nothing more valuable than the customers' attention. They spend millions of dollars trying to capture our attention. Technology has evolved to take advantage of us and it does it surreptitiously, tapping into many aspects of our human psychology. But it's created something even more sinister in its wake: an environment of perpetual digital distraction.

In the attention economy, ...