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From fitness tracking devices to search engines, it’s easy to think of personalised technologies as convenient shortcuts and useful tools for working towards goals. But, argues James Williams, a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a former Google employee, the primary aim of personalised tech is to keep users coming back by any means necessary – and often in a way that encourages empty distraction. In this brief animation featuring audio from a 2017 lecture at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) in London, Williams makes the case that the consolidation of the ‘attention economy’ to just a handful of companies is an unprecedented and deeply fraught human experiment – and one that demands active, attentive resistance.
Video by the RSA
Director: Olga Makarchuk
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Archaeology
How researchers finally solved the puzzle of the oldest known map of the world
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Love and friendship
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Art
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Meaning and the good life
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Sex and sexuality
From secret crushes to self-acceptance – a joyful chronicle of ‘old lesbian’ stories
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Making
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Education
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Art
Watch as Japan’s surplus trees are transformed into forest-tinted crayons
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Meaning and the good life
‘Everydayness is the enemy’ – excerpts from the existentialist novel ‘The Moviegoer’
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