They’re not rejecting technology. They’re choreographing it.
An inability to focus is a design problem. As I noted back in 2020 on my now-defunct literaci.es blog, perhaps we need notification literacy (archive.org link).
If the problem is screens inherently, then we need cultural revival, a return to books, perhaps even a neo-Luddite retreat from technology. But if the problem is design, then we need design activism and regulatory intervention. The same screens that fragment attention can support it. The same technologies that extract human attention can cultivate it. The question is who designs them, for what purposes, and under what constraints.
In the library, I watch people navigate information in ways that would have seemed impossible to previous generations. A research question that once required weeks of archival work now takes hours. But more than efficiency has changed. The nature of synthesis itself has transformed.
Ideas now move through multiple channels simultaneously. A documentary provides emotional resonance and visual evidence. Its transcript enables the precision needed to locate a specific argument. A newsletter unpacks the implications. A podcast allows the ideas to marinate during a commute. Each mode contributes something the others cannot. This isn’t decline. It’s expansion.
What strikes me most is the difference between people who’ve learned to construct what I call ‘containers for attention’ – bounded spaces and practices where different modes of engagement become possible – and those who haven’t. The distinction isn’t about intelligence or discipline. It’s about environmental architecture. Some people have learned to watch documentaries with a notebook, listen to podcasts during walks when their minds can wander productively, read physical books in deliberately quiet spaces with phones left behind. They’re not rejecting technology. They’re choreographing it.
Others are drowning, attempting sustained thought in environments engineered to prevent it. They sit with laptops open, seven tabs competing for attention, notifications sliding in from three different apps, phones vibrating every few minutes. They’re trying to read serious material while fighting a losing battle against behavioural psychology weaponised at scale. They believe their inability to focus is a personal failure rather than a design problem. They don’t realise they’re trying to think in a space optimised to prevent thinking.
This is where my understanding of literacy has fundamentally shifted. I used to believe, as I was taught, that literacy was primarily about decoding text. But watching how people actually learn and think has convinced me that literacy is about something deeper: the capacity to construct and navigate environments where understanding becomes possible.
Source: Aeon
Image: Mario Aziz