Tristan Harris of Time Well Spent
Tristan Harris, a design ethicist and product philosopher, imagines a world where the technology we use helps us live better lives. A Stanford computer science major who was worked at Apple, Wikia, Google and founded his own startup , a multimedia tool for bloggers and publishers called Apture, Harris is a true product of the silicon valley tech culture. But through his experience — both in the lab and in the office — Harris saw something deeply troubling. The “attention economy” that functions in our technology-driven world has resulted in a “race to the bottom of the brainstem. In an effort to get more eyeballs, and higher engagement numbers, developer and designers engineer software to distract. Notifications, messages, email, and news feeds are constantly distracting users from their original intentions — conditioning them to lose focus and send more time consuming. Because the software we use plays such a large role in our daily lives, the software we use shapes our lives. This simple understanding is what has driven to Tristan Harris to established Time Well Spent, and what drives him to blog.
Harris’s blog roll can be found in his larger site, where he houses video interviews, lectures, and a resumé of speaking engagements. Although he doesn’t blog too often (an average of a post every two months), the blog is a vital part of the Time Well Spent movement Harris aims to start, and his online personality as a whole. Because the topic of technology and the politics of the attention economy are so broad and far-reaching, the blog allows Harris to break down concepts embedded in his philosophy in more bit-sized terms. Harris categorizes his writing as as a discussion of human interface design and ethics, and since Time Well Spent is still in its infancy, the majority of the posts serve as introductions to the topic.
According to Similarweb, Tristan “Essay’ portion of his site that serves as his blog gets an average of about 12,000 visits a month. As expected, the average time for each of these visits are only 51 seconds. Although this engagement time is unfortunate for his blog, it seems to drive home his point that within the current context of our tech, we are programmed to be distracted. In the same vein, Tristan practices what he preaches, including an “estimated reading time” for each post — encouraging his readers to be conscious of their time.
His blog content includes a educational intro on “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds”, a call to action in “Tech Companies Design Your Life, Here’s Why You Should Care”, and tips for rebooting your phone to make tour interactions with it more mindful. Seems to get more personal in his more recent writing — in his last post he included a childhood picture of him performing a magic trick to illustrate the practice of product design. He also supplemented his writing with concept sketches to drive home abstract concepts. This approach likely mean to increase the appeal of the writing to more than just product designers, which is necessary to the work having an impact. His writing is concise and engaging, but could be improved by adding more embedded links into his posts to connect his writing to others. Adding links would also help Harris avoid so much explanation, and allow him to arrive at more abstract concepts sooner.
Harris’s Recent TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_how_better_tech_could_protect_us_from_distraction?language=en
