Bing! Pop! Woosh! These are my best text imitations of notification sounds. And they are a major part of our activity today.
We are going to get into some ethical tech,which is part of the description for this program. In my view, ethical technology is tech that supports you as a person and doesn’t purposefully distract or hinder you. The Humane Tech Community calls it “human flourishing”. The Center for Humane Tech called is “fighting human downgrading”. Everyone has a definition of what ethically technology looks like, and we are working together to achieve that vision. But there is a general consensus that most apps are designed to capture your attention and not let it go. They are designed to be somewhat addicting. This leads to a discussion of the attention economy and the battle all the apps on our phones have for our limited daily attention. I will provide resources so you can go into depth, but the down low is this: the more you are on an app, the more data can be collected on you and the more advertising can be targeted at you, and the more money companies can make. All apps want you to be on their app, so they make their app design, notification sounds, and even their fonts as pleasing to you as possible so you won’t want to leave. Things like having an infinite feed also contribute to this desire to keep scrolling. So part of the reason we are on our devices so much is not because we lack willpower, but because the apps we are using are designed to trap our human brains. One of the easiest ways to help, at least somewhat, remove yourself from all of Big Tech’s shenanigans is to turn off notifications on all your nonessential apps. It is a very simple way to put yourself back in control of what you consume. Instead of responding to the singing call of a notification designed to pull you in, you can access what you want when you want. And every time you get the little box that reads “Would You Like to Allow Notifications?”, you click “Don’t Allow” from now on. Turning off Gmail notifications, I can say, really changed my life. It helped me stop chasing after every spam email and irrelevant school announcement that was popping up in my inbox. Below I will be linking a bunch of resources on ethical and humane tech, and how to turn off your notifications. Have fun taking back your attention! The Mindful Digital Native Resources: Addicting Design: https://www.vox.com/2018/2/27/17053758/phone-addictive-design-google-apple Why Notifications Are Distracting: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rest/201507/notifications-are-the-new-distractions Center for Humane Tech - Why Our Attention Has Been Hijacked: https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them/ Center for Humane Tech Blog: https://humanetech.com/category/blog Tech Ethicist David Ryan Polger: https://www.davidpolgar.com/what-is-a-tech-ethcist#! How to Turn Android Notifications Off: https://www.digitaltrends.com/android/how-to-turn-off-notifications-in-android/ How to Turn Apple Notifications Off: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/turn-off-notifications-iphone,news-21195.html
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