[dredmorbius]

I'd suggest ... not, for the most part.

Though there's the option of planting little long-focus concentration seeds by dropping references to both longer-form high-quality works and the mindset that it takes to absorb them within more accessible materials. Books have pretty much always had an accessibility problem --- they're hard to publicise and attract readers to, and there's a considerable infrastructure that's been set up in all manner of contexts to make this easier, including lectures (academic, public, business), interviews, serial and excerpt publications, etc. The fields of education and pedagogy (amongst others) are consumed with this challenge --- minds are not simply buckets into which torrents of content should be jetted.

It seems somewhat similar to me to autopsy and dissection --- the goal is to open up the body and reveal the interesting bits inside, ultimately with the hope that some might find a way to appreciate the integrated (and still functioning) whole. Books, unlike humans, typically survive such treatments.

I see the two approaches as bringing deep content to the distracted (what you're proposing) vs. calming the distracted and bringing them to deep content and teaching the process of attending. Ultimately I think we're going to need the latter. Though some morsal-isation may be of use. Keep in mind that there's been a long history of this throughout the history of media technologies (cuneiform, papayrus, codices, books, photography, phonography, video, computer games, ...), most of high excpectations and exceedingly limited success.

[mordae]

I second this.

What has worked for me in the past to get away from reading morsel-sized content and back into reading long prose was a lighthearted, but captivating book. I have read something from Terry Pratchett and by the end of the book, I was itching to finally give a read to other works in my library that were just collecting dust.

In some of his works the gags flow so well, you just can't stop turning pages. You "win the jackpot" pretty often.

[currere]

I am curious. If it's not too personal - you seem to be someone who reads a lot and synthesises it together into interesting output. You appear to have some control and resistance to the attention stealing machine, and haven't succumbed to the traps we're bemoaning elsewhere in the thread - tiktok, instagram. What use you make of hackernews and reddit appears to be controlled and productive. Is that a fair assessment? Was it ever a struggle? How did you do this?

[dredmorbius]

It's a struggle, and reading long-form content remains challenging. I've an 180,000 book I'd very much like to be reading and ... keep finding myself distracted from it. I'm nowhere near the level of effectiveness and productivity I'd like to be, and I'm constantly fighting various mediated platforms as well as my own psychology in this.

(It's only one of many on my rather intimidating stack....)

The mainstream social media sites never much appealed to me. Facebook always seemed sus, Twitter, more problem than solution. Instagram and TikTok seem well below my age cohort, and I've engaged with either in a very limited fashion --- occasional content that pops up, but no accounts or apps.

My principle mobile device has no interactive account-linked services. I do use Pocket (which ... has issues: <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_...>). I'll read a fair bit of HN, for example, but have to go to another device to actually respond. It's also an e-ink tablet / book-reader, rather than a phone. I've installed very few apps: Termux, a podcast app, a feed reader (which frankly isn't much use), Internet Radio (listening to BBC 4 presently with Liz's exit), Pocket, as mentioned. Little else. Not even email, as yet. That said, e-ink and tablets whilst improvements over emissive, colour-enabled, phone-based mobile devices won't excise you of your own daemons and frailties. It still takes work.

Shutting off WiFi is a huge boon. I don't do it nearly enough.

I disable all notifications where those exist.

Increasing general hostility toward any form of intelligence and informational benefit of the Web are their own strong incentives to curtail usage.

Reddit has shown a constant and increasingly dark series of patterns for years, with a sharp inflection about four years ago. My subreddit is now largely a testament to that fact, and I've almost wholly abandoned use of both it and Reddit at large. My experience is that sites whose goals don't match mine tend to match it increasingly less with time. See: <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/8rq08y/i_wont_...> and <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/9ebkjh/current...>, both of which point to other long-standing concerns.

Otherwise:

- There's this set of (somewhat aspirational) principles I try to follow: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32669503>

- I'd really like to have tools for better monitoring and reviewing what I've read and researched over time. Amongst Pocket's many, many, many failings is that it Is Not At All This But Should Be. Reviewing previous reads ... one often finds that many of them really weren't all that significant. Letting information stew for a bit is often useful, it filters out much uncertainty and bullshit. One notion I'm still looking to properly implement is what I call "BotI", or Best of the Interval. Selecting top items by a period --- week, month, year, etc.

- I have some guilty pleasures. An Imgur binge every so often (a few times a week or month) can give some contact with current trends. Again, not used via an account. Mastodon and Diaspora* have been my principle social outlets. Both can be time sucks, and I try to aggressively filter what I follow, mostly through a curated "highest interest" list or aspect (Diaspora* terminology, similar to Google+ Circles), of people who post with low frequency and high(er) salience. I'll adjust and prune those aggressively.

- I'd been active on Google+ from inception to death, which was an ... interesting experience. It was by stages novel, useless, interesting, useful, and finally, disappointing. Something of a cautionary tale. There were numerous premonitions of what have emerged since as failings of social platforms. Most of the darker aspects of which, I have to say, Google seemed to handle well, though overall adoption of the platform and Google's incoherent strategy regarding it seem to have been the principle fatal blows.

I'm not sure that's coherent, hope it helps.

[dredmorbius]

Erm: 180,000 word book.

(Brad DeLong's Slouching Toward Utopia for the interested.)