In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari shares an interesting idea:
“Every time a new medium comes along—whether it’s the invention of the printed book, or TV, or Twitter—it makes you see things differently.”
And that’s something we can clearly see over time. The way we communicate on different platforms changes — not just because of the cultural shift, but because of the features that these platforms introduce.
Just think about how the introduction of video or stories changed the way people use Instagram.
Another strong point from the book is about books themselves:
“Reading a book is the deepest form of focus we experience — you dedicate many hours of your life, coolly, calmly, to one topic, and allow it to marinate in your mind. This is the medium through which most of the deepest advances in human thought over the past four hundred years have been figured out and explained.”
Being one of the oldest mediums, books rarely change in format (unless we count something like Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, which plays with the concept of non-linear reading). But maybe that’s the reason books still work so well to help us stay focused and grounded.
So — if you’re interested in the connection between platforms, focus, and how attention is shaped — I’d definitely recommend reading Stolen Focus. Especially if you’ve read Hooked by Nir Eyal — who, by the way, is interviewed in this book too.
“The New New Product Development Game” article had been on my reading list for a few months. Written in 1986, it influenced the creation of Scrum six years later.
I was very surprised by how well-written and relevant it still feels. Not something you typically expect from an academic paper written decades ago.
Highly recommend reading it here if you are interested in how big companies tried to find faster ways of developing completely new products: https://lnkd.in/dW9FbXpu
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