Is big tech addictive? Nir Eyal and I debate.
08/01/19 • 79 min
6 Listeners
“How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?”
That’s the opening line of the description for Nir Eyal’s bestselling 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Hooked became a staple in Silicon Valley circles — it was even recommended to me when I started Vox — and Eyal became a celebrity.
Today, Silicon Valley’s skill at building habit-forming products is looked on more skeptically, to say the least. So I was interested to see him releasing a second book that seemed a hard reversal: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
But Eyal doesn’t think big tech is addictive, and he sees the rhetoric of people who do — like me — as “ridiculous.” He believes the answer to digital distraction lies in individuals learning to exercise forethought and discipline, not demonizing companies that make products people love.
Eyal and I disagree quite a bit in this conversation. But it’s a disagreement worth having. Life is the sum total of what we pay attention to. Who is in control of that attention, and how we can wrest it back, is a central question of our age.
Book Recommendations:
Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope by Johann Hari
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
“How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?”
That’s the opening line of the description for Nir Eyal’s bestselling 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Hooked became a staple in Silicon Valley circles — it was even recommended to me when I started Vox — and Eyal became a celebrity.
Today, Silicon Valley’s skill at building habit-forming products is looked on more skeptically, to say the least. So I was interested to see him releasing a second book that seemed a hard reversal: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
But Eyal doesn’t think big tech is addictive, and he sees the rhetoric of people who do — like me — as “ridiculous.” He believes the answer to digital distraction lies in individuals learning to exercise forethought and discipline, not demonizing companies that make products people love.
Eyal and I disagree quite a bit in this conversation. But it’s a disagreement worth having. Life is the sum total of what we pay attention to. Who is in control of that attention, and how we can wrest it back, is a central question of our age.
Book Recommendations:
Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope by Johann Hari
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Previous Episode
Generation Climate Change
This is one of those episodes I want to put the hard sell on. It’s one of the most important conversations I’ve had on the show. The fact that it left me feeling better about the world rather than worse — that was shocking.
Varshini Prakash is co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement. Sunrise is part of a new generation of youth-led climate-change movements that emerged out of the failure of the global political system to address the climate crisis. They’re the ones who made the Green New Deal a litmus test for 2020. They’re the reason there might be a climate debate. They’re the reason candidates’ climate plans have gotten so much more ambitious.
Behind these movements is the experience of coming of age in the era of climate crisis and the new approach to organizing birthed by that trauma. We also talk about Sunrise’s theory of organizing, why it’s a mistake to say you’re saving the planet when you’re saving humanity, Sunrise’s motto “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies,” the joys of organizing in the face of terrible odds, and, unexpectedly, the Tao Te Ching.
This is a conversation about climate change and about political organizing, but it’s also about finding agency amid despair. Don’t miss it.
Book recommendations:
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King Jr.
This Is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler
Tao Te Ching by Laozi
*******************************************************
The Ezra Klein Show has been nominated for best Society- culture podcast in this year’s People’s Choice Podcast Awards! Cast your vote for The Ezra Klein Show at https://www.podcastawards.com/app/signup before July 31st. One vote per category.
Please send guest suggestions for our upcoming series on climate change to [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Next Episode
Astra Taylor will change how you think about democracy
Astra Taylor’s new book has the best title I’ve seen in a long time: Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.
I talk a lot about democracy on this show, but not in the way Taylor talks about it. The democracy I discuss is bounded by the assumptions of American politics. This, however, is not a conversation about the filibuster, the Senate, or the Electoral College — it is far more diverse and far more radical.
Taylor and I cover a lot of ground in this interview. We discuss how what it would mean to extend democracy to our job and schools, whether animals, future humans, or even nature itself can have political rights, how democracy thinks about noncitizens and children, and what would happen if we selected congress by lottery.
Something I appreciate about Taylor’s work is it’s alive to paradoxes, ambiguities, and hard questions that don’t offer easy answers. This conversation is no different.
References:
The link between support for animal rights and human rights
Book Recommendations:
How democratic is the American Constitution? By Robert Dahl
Abolition Democracy by Angela Davis
The Two Faces of American Freedom by Aziz Rana
*******************************************************
Want to contact the show? Reach out at [email protected]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing-11537/is-big-tech-addictive-nir-eyal-and-i-debate-415925"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to is big tech addictive? nir eyal and i debate. on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy