From SLUK to Offline...

It's been a little less than a year since the Danish version of my book SLUK (Offline) was released. It dealt with how our attention has become a commodity bought and sold by businesses like Facebook and Google and with what happens when addictive user-interface design turns your smartphone into a tool that diminishes your attention span and damages your ability to concentrate and stay focused. 

What is really at play here is a clash between human biology –– millions of years of evolution and 60.000 years of socialisation that defines our cognitive capabilities clashing with the fragmentation of consciousness caused by a continual onslaught of "notifications", "messages", "tweets", "engagements", "animations", "emojis" that battle for our attention and reward us for "paying attention" by helping our nervous systems release small doses of serotonin that makes us feel a momentary lift in mood.

But what happens when an entire generation of youngsters end up hooked on quick fixes, instant gratification and constant vying for attention? The honest answer is that we don't know –– short term we can see it causes issues with focus and attention span (in recent research Microsoft could report that the average human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish) –– but longer term the answer is that we don't know. What we do know, however, is that children and youngsters have brains that are still "under development" and that interacting with addictive social media designs, games and other apps through smartphones and iPads may indeed "rewire" their basic cognitive apparatus turning it into something different from what it is today. There is not necessarily anything wrong what that –– but there is something scary about these changes taking place over a very short period of time and in a way where we have no way of knowing where this is leading us. 

At the same time, one definitely has to recognize the tremendous benefits technology has brought and continues to bring our society –– massive advances in everything from information processing to medical treatment and materials science has been roaring ahead these pasts years and are in the midst of causing massive positive transformation at every level of society.

So the real question becomes –– how do you humanize technology? How do you build user-experience that augments human cognition and human capabilities without simultaneously wrecking havoc with our attention span or ability to focus? And if you have already been caught up in the gears of addictive design and constant usage of your smartphone to reward yourself with small doses of serotonin –– how do you get away from that and regain your old and more focused self without having to give up your smartphone or having to give up on social media and the many apps you love?

In Denmark my book about this sold 10.000 copies –– which is a lot for such a small country –– and it kicked off an intense public debate about smartphones and addictive design –– a debate that has had impact at many levels of society including our government, our educational institutions and our teachers.

But this message and the ideas we have developed for humanizing technology really needs a broader platform than just Denmark. It needs to be heard, to be thought about and to be discussed by many more people.

So I am proud to announce that UK publisher J. Wiley and Sons have agreed to publish an upcoming English version of my book in the US, UK and several Asian countries. What's more it will not be exactly the same book –– since the first version came out about a year ago development within this area has been huge –– so what my co-author Soren Kenner and I will be releasing is in essence version 2.0 with updated sections on topics such as search-engine bias, news fragmentation, social media echo-chamber effects, creation of cognitive dissonance, cyber-tribalism and more. 

What we will be arguing is that humans need to get better at building and maintaining their own internal value systems and better at fighting back against outside pressures designed to get you into "flock mode" in order to capture and commoditize your attention.

However, we intend to go beyond just laying out the facts (obviously supported by carefully referenced research) and will conclude by providing a number of templates you can use to help out in specific situations such as "managing children's iPad use", "balancing your own use of social media", "dialing down your smartphones addictive qualities" etc –– and we will show you how all of this can be integrated into a simple mental training system we call FLOW, that helps you get more out of your time by making you more present, more aware and more focused in the here and now with your family, in your worklife, with your leisure time and with your "solo-time".

We hope to have our manuscript delivered to Wiley in 4-5 months and the new book –– working title: OFFLINE, what you need to know to get your brain under control" could be in the bookstores as early as next October or November.

Stay tuned for more updates: We hope to engage you and many others in the discussion and in the building of this project.