A device engineered to interrupt cannot be a net gain to thinking

The argument

A second objection concerns what phones are designed to do. Opponents argue that the device is not a neutral reference instrument that happens also to carry entertainment; its commercial model depends on holding attention, and the features that do so are the ones that have been most heavily developed. Notifications, endless feeds, recommendation streams and social feedback are engineered to interrupt whatever the user is doing and to reward the interruption. A tool with this design cannot be assessed by what it could be used for, because what it is used for is substantially determined by how it was built. Opponents argue that the costs fall on precisely the capacities the question concerns. Sustained concentration on a difficult text, holding a complicated problem in mind long enough to see its structure, following an argument that takes an hour to develop, and tolerating the boredom that hard thinking requires are all undermined by a device offering an easier alternative every few minutes. The habit of checking persists even when there is nothing to check, so attention is fragmented by anticipation as well as by interruption. On this account the device does not add capability to an otherwise intact thinker; it reshapes the thinker. Opponents add that the information environment these devices deliver is not organised for accuracy. What reaches a person is selected to engage them, which favours material that is striking, emotive or confirming over material that is careful or qualified. Being exposed to more information of that composition does not improve someone's grasp of the world and can worsen it, since confident falsehood travels better than hedged truth. A population with more information and less capacity to evaluate it, opponents conclude, is not a smarter one.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents argue that this describes a design problem rather than a verdict on the technology, and that the same complaint was made of every medium that preceded it. They point out that the features identified are configurable: notifications can be turned off, feeds avoided, and the device used deliberately, and that many people do exactly this. They also argue that the account proves too much, since by the same reasoning any instrument capable of distraction would have to be judged a net loss regardless of what it enables. On the information environment, proponents reply that the same devices put primary sources, expert explanation and the means of verification within reach of anyone, which is a change in the direction of accuracy rather than away from it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Commercial design does not determine use: notifications can be disabled and feeds avoided, and many people use the device deliberately. [Rejecting P2] The same charge of fragmented attention was made against every earlier medium, and it did not establish a net loss in any of those cases. [Rejecting P3] These devices also put primary sources, expert explanation and the means of verification within reach of anyone, which pushes toward accuracy. [Rejecting C] Judging a tool by its worst pattern of use rather than by what it enables would condemn any instrument capable of distraction.