August 16, 2013

Quick Reads: “The Distraction Addiction” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang


 

The Distraction Addiction

The Distraction Addiction

By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

In this rumination on our shrinking digital-era attention spans, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang reminds us that our brains are still capable of feats far beyond the reach of computers. We may be afflicted with “monkey mind,” he concludes, but rather than fight our compulsions with web-blocking software like Freedom, we’re better off embracing technology as an extension of self, wielding it as unthinkingly as we would a bionic arm.

This review originally appeared in our July/August issue of Mother Jones. 

 

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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