And I felt like I could see this happening to most of the people I knew. I could do them, but they were getting harder and harder. It felt like things that require a deep focus, like reading a book, or watching long films, were getting more and more like running up and down an escalator.

I noticed that with each year that passed, it felt like my own attention was getting worse. You’ve said every book of yours is an attempt to unpack a mystery.

As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We discuss what happened to our attention, who he thinks stole it, and why our collective distraction is a genuine crisis.īelow is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. So I reached out to him for the latest episode of Vox Conversations. But it does point to a problem that we probably don’t take seriously enough. Hari’s book isn’t exactly a blueprint for escaping all of this, and to the extent that it is, I’m skeptical. And it seems to be getting worse and worse every year.

Hari argues that we’re all becoming lost in our own lives, which feel more and more like a parade of diversions. That’s the business model of Big Tech.Ī new book by the British journalist Johann Hari, called Stolen Focus, takes a close look at what’s happening - and what’s happened - to our collective attention. You’re constantly stalked by advertisers and product peddlers, and your attention is constantly being harvested and sold. If you spend any time online, you already know this. And if you’re part of this circus, you’re drowning in options and gadgets and screens and you’re being pulled in a million directions seemingly all at once. We live in a distracted world, almost certainly the most distracted world in human history.

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari