Philosophy of Attention

Introduction:
Williams begins with an introduction to one of Greece's most famous philosophers named Diogenes of Sinope, of whom Williams argues was one of the world's first trolls, with one of his first acts being masturbating in a bucket which he called 'home'. Banished from his hometown for defacing currency and taking a vow of homelessness for the rest of his days, Diogenes would frequently spit at those who walked by him and is thought to have frequented the lectures of other philosophers such as Plato to do nothing more than to disrupt them. Diogenes is indeed one of the earlier examples of a troll and you have to give him credit; while most modern trolls have the luxury of hiding behind their computer screen, Diogenes acted like a troll out in public, knowing full well that if he heckled the wrong person he could be instantly killed. He is known today as one of the founders of cynic philosophy.

Chapter 1: A detailed summary of the chapter can be found in this video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Chapter 2: Williams spends the vast majority of this chapter talking about the misalignment between technology and our personal goals, in that our personal goals are to use technology for our personal desires, but more the less often the personal goals of these technologies are to keep us using them for an extended period of time. He compares the goals of these technologies in that if a GPS were to not lead us directly to the location we wished to be at we would consider the GPS to be faulty, whereas modern technologies have clever ways of hiding this misalignment between machine and mankind. To a certain extent we see this type of technology everywhere; why do you think that YouTube has recommended videos alongside the one that you are already watching? It's so that you spend more time on YouTube and less time elsewhere! (Ironically enough Williams mentioned working at Google which led him to this question, and YouTube has been a property of Google for years)

Chapter 3: At the time that Williams wrote his book, on average nearly 13 appliances in every household were in some way connected to the Internet (with the advent of Smart appliances, we can only assume that this number has risen in some way). One of the more important points that Williams touches on is that these systems of limitless information that have been created over the past few years are only beginning to be explored. Think about it: Windows 95 was only slightly more than 2 decades ago and Facebook only slightly more than a decade ago. Who knows what potential the future could hold if we've jumped from Windows 95 to Windows 10 in the span of slightly more than 2 decades.

Chapter 4: Williams begins by talking about how something as trivial as an application he downloaded in his calculator was able to dissuade him from listening in to his calculus lectures. He then begins to share his idea for an impulsivity training device known as iTrainer which would give everyone access to informational rewards on demand. This technology would adapt to peoples individual quirks to the point of knowing everything about the user. After a few years, he claims that 9 out of 10 people wouldn't be able to leave their home without their iTrainer. Obviously Williams idea of iTrainer is inherently similar to the idea of an iPhone, with many people not being able to live without their iPhones