The Distractatron
Learning to see clearly in a world of engineered engagement
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:“This is water.”
“This is water.”
These last few lines near the end of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 are haunting. If the metaphor that he uses of “the water” is unfamiliar to you, take a few minutes to read or listen to the full speech on your next commute. The basic idea is that like fish swimming in the water have no concept of life outside of it, we easily grow numb to the wonder of reality that is around us.
The fleeting nature of life
The past few days have been full of joy and reflection for me as my wife and I celebrated Christmas with our two young kids. Christmas is a magical time no matter your age, but there is something especially wonderful when seeing it through the eyes of children.
I think a lot about how my kids help me to see things more clearly. Explaining things to a three year old or listening to what they think about puts things in perspective. I don’t have any utopian visions about our kids “saving us,” but nevertheless they can teach us a lot. Maybe this was part of what Jesus was driving at: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” The first step is seeing again and kids can break through our silos, smashing the jaded and uncurious view of the world that we develop over time.
As I reflect on 2022 and look forward to 2023, my main goal is to take concrete steps to be more present and attentive. Life is ephemeral. As another year draws to an end I’m more aware than ever that life is fleeting. The truth is that our days consist of the things that we pay attention to. But in a world where eyeballs are worth money, attention is a fractured and coveted resource. We catch ourselves mindlessly swiping through apps on our phones, tabs in our browsers, and message threads, programmed to chase dopamine hits only to find later that we are consumed and exhausted by the process. At the same time, we find it more difficult to notice the simple beauty of the world around us in nature, a good cup of coffee, delicious meal, or meaningful and meandering conversations with friends. As Mónica Guzmán notes in her book I Never Thought of It That Way we’re “caught between the world that we create and the world around us.”
The Distractatron
The problem is, we incentivize companies to grab our attention, even if that’s not what’s in our best interest. I was reminded of this from a story shared by Maryanne Wolf recently about the way that Moonbug Entertainment, the company that produces the popular YouTube show CoComelon uses a feedback loop to make their show maximally engaging. Enter the “Distractatron.”
It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes — a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut — each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.
These notes are then used to identify places where the show can be tuned up to be more engaging, addressing weak points where the viewer might break away. It’s like the removal of the “load more posts” button, replaced by the infinite newsfeed we’re familiar with all over the web. A simple change which removes a natural point to break away.
If you dare, you can tune into the live, 24/7 feed of nursery rhymes that runs on their channel. The saturated colors, animated characters, constant movement and camera panning – it’s all engineered to suck kids in and keep them glued to the screen.
The point here is not to single out one company, but to remind us that this is going on everywhere. Every social media app or website we use is trying to suck us in and keep us engaged. What do we do?
Art as a solution
There are however, some simple (not easy!) solutions to this problem, as I was reminded recently in a tweet from one of my favorite technology and culture thinkers, L.M. Sacasas: just turn it off.
However, the reality is that we often lack the discipline to “turn it over or off.” So how do we combat the Distractatron?
I think that art as an expression of human creativity and imagination presents a solution which can help us to recover our ability to see and listen clearly. Frederick Buechner, in The Remarkable Ordinary writes:
[A]rt is saying Stop. It helps us to stop by putting a frame around something and makes us see it in a way we would never have seen it under the normal circumstances of living, as so many of us do, on sort of automatic pilot, going through the world without really seeing much of anything.
Art in whatever form – painting, photography, film, poetry, literature, music – is an antidote that can help us to slow down and regain the ability to see again. This is why a habit of reading deeply and widely is such a valuable skill to cultivate. Literature takes us out of our world and immerses us in another, putting us in conversation with others beyond those we would normally encounter in our day to day. This is even more important as we continue to geographically silo ourselves and lose out on the ability to serendipitously run into others who we disagree with.
Prototypes
This week, in the calm after Christmas and before the New Year springs to life, I hope you can join me in stopping for a few moments to reflect on the past year and form intentions for the year to come. Use a template and list of questions like the ones suggested in this tweet from Dickie Bush. And don’t just sit and think about it, but write down your thoughts as a note to your future self so that you can look back and review them later in the year.
Entering 2023, my focus is on being more attentive and present – learning to see again. Here are a few prototypes that I am planning to try out that might inspire some of your own.
Fostering a daily practice of noticing – write down responses to a few short prompts each evening before bed. What was one thing that surprised you today? What gave you joy today? What are you thankful for? What new thing did you notice or learn today?
Honing my listening skills – spend time sans screens with the people I care most about. This starts with my wife and kids, but extends to my close friends, extended family, colleagues, and students. I want to be the kind of person who listens well and asks good questions.
Embracing Sabbath – This year I decided to banish the phone from my bedroom. This has been a wonderful practice that has helped me to better wind down at night and wake up each morning. Next year, I want to further embrace this by deepening my Sabbath practices to remove or aggressively reduce screens one day a week and, if I can manage it, for one week in the summer when I am on break.
The Book Nook
This past week I revisited an oldie but goodie – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis It has been a while since I’d read this one as a kid but I was reminded of all the reasons this is a classic: beautiful storytelling, vivid characters and scenes, and deep symbolism.
A few of the quotes that resonated with me as I read through this time.
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.
The Professor Is In
Robert Talbert is one of the educators I’ve discovered lately and have been enjoying. In addition to posting on Twitter, Robert writes a great Substack newsletter with his colleague David Clark.
What I was most inspired by recently was the grading policy that he uses for one of his classes. You can read more about it here in the syllabus for his linear algebra course. The short summary is that most assignments have no point values and those that do are graded with only two levels of resolution – satisfactory or unsatisfactory – with an unlimited number of attempts. When students submit an assignment, it is graded according to the specifications and returned with detailed feedback. Then, the student can revise their submission to address any deficiencies and resubmit.
I found this to be a really interesting and thoughtful approach to bringing evaluation within the classroom more in line with the rest of situations outside of college. This also seems to align well with the goal of developing learners as opposed to students aimed at gaming the system to score the most points. I’m looking forward to considering ways that I might prototype this in one of my courses!
Leisure Line
Too many sweets lately, but who doesn’t like cookies at Christmas. This year in addition to my wife’s family favorite slice cookies, I made sugar and chewy molasses cookies. If you’re not yet out of the holiday mood, try them out!
Still Life
A peacock sighting from our most recent trip to the LA Arboretum.
"Fostering a daily practice of noticing – write down responses to a few short prompts each evening before bed. "
In a workplace setting, but applicable in other areas, see the research of Teresa Amabile, especially The Progress Principle --
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6409&view=publications
Thank you for an insightful, hopeful, and challenging entry into a new year! "The truth is that our days consist of the things that we pay attention to."
A quote to support your intentions -- from poet Mary Oliver, in section 4 of "Sometimes" --
https://www.livingcompass.org/wwow/pay-attention-be-astonished-tell-about-it