7 Quotes by Michael Harris

If solitude feels painful, it's only because we don't know how to be alone.

When we think we're multitasking we're actually multiswitching. That is what the brain is very good at doing - quickly diverting its attention from one place to the next. We think we're being productive. We are, indeed, being busy. But in reality we're simply giving ourselves extra work.

Never forget that you live in an ecosystem designed to disrupt you and it will take you for a ride if you let it.

When we go online, we commit ourselves to the care of online mechanisms. Digital Band-Aids for digital wounds. We feed ourselves into machines, hoping some algorithm will digest the mess that is our experience into something legible, something more meaningful than the "bag of associations" we fear we are.

Perhaps we now need to engineer scarcity in our communications, in our interactions, and in the things we consume. Otherwise our lives become like a Morse code transmission that's lacking breaks - a swarm of noise blanketing the valuable data beneath.

Every technology will alienate you from some part of your life. That is its job. Your job is to notice. First notice the difference. And then, every time, choose.

Experiment. Live a little. And remember that the fear of absence is the surest sign that absence is direly needed.