Johann Hari’s book on the attention crisis was prompted by his godson’s addiction to his screens and his inability to focus and by the author’s own struggles with attention and distraction. Hari is a British-Swiss journalist who has written books on depression and the war on drugs and has given hugely popular TED talks on addiction and depression. He was involved around 2011 in a controversy about plagiarism and anonymous Wikipedia edits but he has acknowledged his ethical failures. The author contends that, at an individual level, a life full of distractions is diminished—when we’re unable to pay sustained attention, we can’t achieve the things we want to achieve. At a social level, such a life diminishes our collective capacity to understand and respond to the problems of today. Finally, he argues, if we understand what’s happening in our world, we can begin to change it. Go With the Flow …
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