Stand Out of Our Light

[droqen]

The above quote is used in the book to describe what is lost, what is taken by attention, but I much prefer it outside of that context, presented as appreciation of what we have all the time, of what we may notice and choose to strengthen further. Something "good but too weak", to bring out through successive transformations.

[droqen]

P. 104

. . . the perspective of infraethics views society itself as a sort of persuasive technology, with a persuasive design goal of maximizing moral actions.

[infraethics is attention to the infrastructural] first-order framework of implicit expectations, attitudes, and practices that can facilitate and promote morally good decisions and actions.

[droqen]

Williams briefly discusses societal 'reboot', musing on whether such a thing could be necessary. This is a bad line of thinking.

He goes on to describe some goals!

P. 108

As a society, we ought to . . . ask what we ultimately want advertising to do for us. . . . The presence of a series of organizations dedicated to a task can in no sense be justification for that task.

An interesting observation... I of course believe the first part. In all contexts of human activity, we must pursue knowing what we want.

The second part—it's so tempting to think of reboot when seeing things that appear to be at best vestigial and on top of that possibly, probably, harmless. Perhaps the fact that it is being done is no 'justification' for a task, but attention paid to tearing down seems so much less useful than attention paid to finding and building upon what would take its place.

[droqen]

P116

What can policy do in the short term . . . ? . . . Set standards for the measurement of certain sorts of attentional harm—that is, quantify their "pollution" of the inner environment . . .

[droqen]

Hmm. Policy. Policy isn't really my thing, but it is powerful. I return to the thought of smooth unfolding, of structure-preserving transformations. But information seems good.

P116

quantify their "pollution" of the inner environment -- and require that digital media companies measure their effects on these metrics and report on them periodically to the public.

[droqen]

P117

"Whatever man you meet," advised the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations, "say to yourself at once: 'what are the principles this man entertains as goods and ills?'" This is good advice not only upon encountering persuasive people, but persuasive technologies as well. . . . Do the goals my trusted systems have for me align with the goals I have for myself? There's nothing wrong with trusting the people behind our technologies, nor do we need perfect knowledge of their motivations to justifiably do so. Trust always involves taking some risk.

[droqen]

"professional oaths."

[droqen]

These next few pages talk about professional oaths and discusses what a "Designer's Oath" might look like, what we might expect from it, where it might fail, what its drawbacks might be. They are a good handful of pages of thinking and I am much more aligned with the idea of an oath than a set of rules.

I'm going to quote pieces of what Williams describes as the "alpha", designed to be built upon and changed and made 'more poetic and memorable than this', because I think the spirit of it is extremely good. In particular i love the very first sentence, how it frames the enormity of the responsibility of the task at hand:

P130

As someone who shapes the lives of others, I promise to. . . care genuinely about their success. . . align my projects and actions with their intentions, goals, and values. . . respect their dignity, attention, and freedom, and never use their own weaknesses against them. . . measure the full effect of my projects on their lives, and not just those effects that are important to me. . . communicate clearly, honestly, and frequently my intentions and methods. . . promote their ability to direct their own lives by encouraging reflection on their own values, goals, and intentions.

[droqen]

"As someone who shapes the lives of others. . ."

[droqen]

I suppose that most everyone shapes the lives of others. It's both inspiring and humbling to think about.

[droqen]

P128

. . . the degree to which we are able and willing to struggle for ownership of our attention is the degree to which we are free.

I don't know, this just seems so narrow. Williams rightly identifies attention as a crucial ingredient but mistakes it for the whole pie—"attention == freedom." It is not. He doesn't need to overstate the importance of his thesis! It's important! But he does, and this undercurrent has irritated me the whole time.

[droqen]

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It's important to have and claim the capacity and will to own our attention. It's just not the only thing on the road to freedom, even if it seems like the bottleneck in our modern times.