The perverse effect of “too many toys”: how to nurture your kids’ creativity (and your own)

According to the Time Magazine article, “Because Franzen believes you can’t write serious fiction on a computer that’s connected to the internet, he not only removed the Dell’s wireless card but also permanently blocked its Ethernet port.”

“What you have to do,” he explains, “is you plug in an Ethernet cable with superglue, and then you saw off the little head off it.” [Blogger’s note: We’re glad this worked for Mr. Franzen, but we do NOT recommend you try this at home!]

This ain't no Guitar Wolf, boy...

Welcome to the New Normal. Social media is reformatting our interior lives. As platform and individual become inseparable, social networking becomes identical with the ‘social’ itself. No longer curious what ‘the next web’ will bring, we chat about what sort of information we’re allowed to graze over during meagre days. Former confidence in the seasonality of hypes that come and go have been shattered. Instead, a new realism has set in, as Evgeny Morozov put in a tweet: “1990s tech utopianism posited that networks weaken or replace hierarchies. In reality, networks amplify hierarchies and make them less visible.”[1] An amoral stand towards today’s intense social media usage, would be, not to deliver a superior judgement and instead delve into the shallow time of lost souls like us. How can one write a phenomenology of asynchronous connections and the cultural effects, formulate a ruthless critique of everything hardwired into the social body of the network, while not looking at what’s going on inside? Let’s therefore embark on a journey into this third space called the techno-social.

"echnology is hijacking our minds and society.

Our world-class team of deeply concerned former tech insiders and CEOs intimately understands the culture, business incentives, design techniques, and organizational structures driving how technology hijacks our minds.

Since 2013, we’ve raised awareness of the problem within tech companies and for millions of people through broad media attention, convened top industry executives, and advised political leaders. Building on this start, we are advancing thoughtful solutions to change the system."