Just read a cool essay by Ploum, nothing earth-shattering, but I loved these lines in particular:
> The world we are living in is that same chess game on the easiest setting. Everything happens immediately, all the time. White-collar work can now be summarised as trying to reply as fast as possible to every single email until calling it a day and starting again in the morning, a process which essentially prevents any deep thinking, as pointed by Cal Newport in his book "A world without email".
> As we don’t have the time to think anymore, we masquerade our lack of ideas with behavioural tricks. **We replaced documents with PowerPoints because it allowed lack of structure and emptiness to look professional** (just copy paste the data of the last PowerPoint you received in a text file and see by yourself how pitiful it is. PowerPoint communications at NASA were even diagnosed by Edward R. Tufte, author of the "The cognitive style of PowerPoint", as one of the causes that led to Space Shuttle Columbia’s disaster).
> The root problem is that, for the first time in human history, our brain is the bottleneck. For all history, transmitting information was slow. Brains were fasts. After sending a letter, we had days or months to think before receiving an answer. Erasmus wrote his famous "Éloge de la folie" in several days while travelling in Europe. He would never have done it in a couple of hours in a plane while the small screen in the backseat would show him advertisements.
> In 2012, the French writer Thierry Crouzet had one of the first recorded "online burnout". Being connected all the time with interesting strangers and interesting ideas to which he wanted to reply quickly was too much for his brain. One night, he had a strong panic attack and decided to spend six months without the Internet, an experience he told in his book "J’ai débranché".
I also love that in just a few paragraphs, got like 3 things to add to my reading list.
Can find the rest here: https://ploum.net/2024-03-18-lost-focus.html
Or on Gemini here: gemini://ploum.net/2024-03-18-lost-focus.gmi
Techpriest Baunach
npub1tvw…s44n
2024-03-21 20:09:25
Author Public Key
npub1tvw3h5xqnuc2aq5zelxp3dy58sz7x9u8e6enkxywmrz70cg2j2zqjes44nPublished at
2024-03-21 20:09:25Event JSON
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"content": "Just read a cool essay by Ploum, nothing earth-shattering, but I loved these lines in particular:\n\n\u003e The world we are living in is that same chess game on the easiest setting. Everything happens immediately, all the time. White-collar work can now be summarised as trying to reply as fast as possible to every single email until calling it a day and starting again in the morning, a process which essentially prevents any deep thinking, as pointed by Cal Newport in his book \"A world without email\".\n\n\u003e As we don’t have the time to think anymore, we masquerade our lack of ideas with behavioural tricks. **We replaced documents with PowerPoints because it allowed lack of structure and emptiness to look professional** (just copy paste the data of the last PowerPoint you received in a text file and see by yourself how pitiful it is. PowerPoint communications at NASA were even diagnosed by Edward R. Tufte, author of the \"The cognitive style of PowerPoint\", as one of the causes that led to Space Shuttle Columbia’s disaster).\n\n\u003e The root problem is that, for the first time in human history, our brain is the bottleneck. For all history, transmitting information was slow. Brains were fasts. After sending a letter, we had days or months to think before receiving an answer. Erasmus wrote his famous \"Éloge de la folie\" in several days while travelling in Europe. He would never have done it in a couple of hours in a plane while the small screen in the backseat would show him advertisements.\n\n\u003e In 2012, the French writer Thierry Crouzet had one of the first recorded \"online burnout\". Being connected all the time with interesting strangers and interesting ideas to which he wanted to reply quickly was too much for his brain. One night, he had a strong panic attack and decided to spend six months without the Internet, an experience he told in his book \"J’ai débranché\". \n\nI also love that in just a few paragraphs, got like 3 things to add to my reading list.\n\nCan find the rest here: https://ploum.net/2024-03-18-lost-focus.html\nOr on Gemini here: gemini://ploum.net/2024-03-18-lost-focus.gmi",
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