Viewpoint When Technology Goes Awry

Abstract

BEGIN MY BOOK, Digital Minimalism, 2 by quoting an essay by the journalist Andrew Sullivan. "An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts," he wrote. "It broke me. Ct might break you, too. "5 When I talk to people about their relationship with their digital devices, many report experiences that echo Sullivan. Many people look at screens constantly; not just for work, but while at home, with their children, while in bed, or even in their bathrooms. Some users jump from Hacker News, to email, then over to Twitter to share a take no one re quested, then back to email. At best, it is needlessly distracting; at worse, it might break some of you, too. So I wrote a book that attempted to untangle the forces that pushed many of people toward this place of diminished autonomy, and then provide ideas about how we might reduce this bombardment of our attention. Given the Communications readership, however, it seems to me the details of what is in this book are less important than the question of why someone like me-a computer science professor who primarily studies the theory of dis tributed systems-is tackling these comparably woolier, public-facing issues in the first place. My answer not only provides insight into my specific path, but more importantly underscores a critical need for engineers in general to get more involved in resolving the increasingly thorny issues generated at the intersection of technology and culture.