It’s very unlike the world of Twitter to lose its mind when the company changes something about its app or service. More words were written about the move to 240 characters than the world needed, but most users just get used to the noise. Some throw all the toys out the pram and quit. Perhaps move to Mastodon for an hour and come back, but as a Twitter developer, you have to expect the outrage when you mess with the timeline.
If the last two years(ish) has taught me anything, it’s that I love working from home. I have been happier, able to get more work done and also be more engaged with home life than ever before. There are a few things I miss from working with people in person, but on the whole I love it — but I’m lonely.
I am not sure what sparked me thinking about the interaction I have, of which I do have quite a lot, but the realisation is that I have very few friends.
For the first episode I would like to re-introduce a guest i recorded with last year. I am joined by podcaster, film maker and all round great friend George Chachanidze.
We talk all things in life including his thoughts on being really close to the current Ukraine war.
Check out his videos on SnappyTech.
Despite me applauding myself, I don’t think I have broken the cycle completely. Sure, the urge to scroll through Twitter every brief break in activity has subsided somewhat, but there is still work to do in getting my attention back. The truth is, for me to completely do as I intend scares me more than a little because I don’t know what I would have left.
I have posed myself several through experiments recently.
Steven Lee Myers, Paul Mozur and Jeff Kao writing in Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland:
While China’s control of what its domestic viewers and readers consume is well established, the country has spread its own version of the Games beyond its borders, with an arsenal of digital tools that are giving China’s narrative arguably greater reach and more subtlety than ever before.When dealing with world events now one of the things you have to navigate is truthfulness.
I feel the same stresses that many people seem to be experiencing at the moment. The pressure in your mind that nothing seems to fix. The inability to concentrate and the nagging idea that you might be depressed. At the point where all the issues that the previous two years brought should be subsiding, for many of us it feels worse.
Perhaps it is my health issues catching up with me, perhaps I am just getting old, but I can’t escape the feeling of dread.
Jordan Pearson writing in Bored Apes, BuzzFeed and the Battle for the Future of the Internet:
What is manifesting is not a world where middlemen are deprived of their share and data brokers are cut out of the action due to clever, privacy-protecting protocols, but rather a new online world in which seemingly anything can be financialized thanks to blockchain technology, which creates a digital infrastructure in which “every product is simultaneously an investment opportunity,” as Bloomberg’s Matt Levine has put it.
During the past few weeks, I have bene leaning on my Apple Watch as my primary device. It has become the answer to most of my distraction problems, and in many ways the most important in my life. Taking a step back and thinking about the use case for all of my devices has proven to be an interesting experiment, and I have come to some differing conclusions than those I may have done before.
The Tim Ferriss Show 477 with Yuval Noah Harari:
the way that we will get so used to having these computers and robots that are very attuned to how we feel that we might become even more irritated with the humans who don't feel who don't react, who don't understand how we feel it don't reacting in the right way.For the longest time I have been trying to figure out why people don’t seem to be able to take up opposing views but still communicate well.
Dan Counsell writing in I Will Not Buy Another iPhone:
Doing whatever they can to get my attention. The trouble is, I'm a sucker.Whilst I get it. The natural response is to blame someone else for the things that are wrong. The alternative, as Nir Eyal highlights in Indistractable, is to feel shame in your weakness of not being able to resist temptation. The reality is that many of us are welcome aware of the manipulation going on, so are more than able to resist.