Your Undivided Attention Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

I started listening to this podcast in 2019 and I have learned so much ever since.
All the crucial topics you discuss are so relevant today and looking forward, it helped me get wider view of what tech is doing to us.
I am not an expert in tech so sometimes I get lost. There were multiple occasions when I had to go back and listening again, maybe considering your audience is not only engineers would help in spreading your podcast.
Anyway great job, keep on with it!

Dear Mr. Harris and Mr. Raskin

First of all let me thank you for your incredible passion and courage to set off on this journey.
The bomb you have been preparing for a long time exploded. Broadcasting the Netflix TV show The Social Dilemma was like taking the safety catch off the grenade. You probably did not expect such an explosion and it is very good that you got so much (undivided) attention from all over the world.
I am an example of that: I live in Italy, I do not work in the tech field or in any other sectors directly involved in the digital sector (I am researcher/teacher/translator). But I live in this world, I am part of it. Can I do something for it?

The question now is: How to capitalize all the work that has been done so far? How to keep that attention at high levels, possibly increase it, and above all make it have a real impact on the life of millions of people?
Our world, this millennium, is completely different from the previous one, there aren’t many handholds to rely on. It is like climbing on a complete new kind of rock with new techniques and strategies without having the possibility to watch what fathers and grandfathers have done before us.
You ask the opinion of all those who came across your work and want to do something to improve our society. I think that the task is overwhelming, which is why I admire you so much.

This multi-faceted, multi-layered, incredibly challenging issue of humane technology is at the core of our entire future as mankind – as well as climate change – and yet apparently it does not affect our everyday life. So, how to make people really aware of that? And how to get people who ultimately take decisions – be they political leaders or policymakers or investors and so on – face to face with such commitment and convince them to go against their profit, their business, their objectives?

I think that there are so many levels of interpretation and significance in the question and that it should be addressed by taking all of them into consideration (and devote podcasts to them):
- the legal aspect: how to lobby for rules and legal advice as far as digital information is concerned;
- the psychological aspect: how to explore the ways our brain can be (and actually is) manipulated and how to fight against these patterns of the human mind, or at least have a better hold on them;
- the sociological aspect: how to project such manipulative strategies into our societies (which are very different) and design the right solution for any specific country or social group.
- the cognitive/logic aspect: how to enhance powerful logical skills in order to create a new environment where debate is given the central stage (I am stunned by the lack of argument skills in our days, not only in normal people, but in our leaders as well);
- the political aspect: how to put all this information, knowledge, awareness on the agenda of the most powerful and influent men and women in the world;
- the pedagogical level: how to foster programmes and develop a network of people who would engage in a new kind of education for our children based on sharing, respect, and knowledge of information.

In the last podcast you said something extremely right and meaningful: “I think people underestimate the power, in terms of the human brain of surround sound […] I think that the nonlinear impact of surround sound versus just hearing it once from one group is something we tend to underestimate”. That is exactly what happens because we are exposed to an incredible amount of information and at the same time we underestimate a lot of things; we need to change the music very quickly if we do not want to end up hearing just a buzzing white noise in our minds.

Tristan, Aza, thank you very much for your brilliant brains (well, thanks to your parents for that), and for having decided to put them at the service of others. This makes you profoundly humane, for humanity lies in the awareness of the beauty of each single individual.
This awareness can make anything you will design and create just as humane as you are.

I hope that there will be room for change and that each of us will be part of it.

With deep gratitude,

Giulia

Ps sorry for my rusty English, I teach Russian!