What percentage of your time spent using technology is dedicated to services that make you feel worse?

Why do we end up entangled with tools that don't seem to have our best interest in mind?

How do we escape this fate and take back control of our attention and reclaim our lives?

Today, we're going to tackle these issues.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions,

the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.

Today's episode, what technology wants, and how to push back.

Thank you. what technology wants and how to push back.

Part one. A Tale of two technologies.

So, Jesse, I don't know if you noticed this, but several people sent us the same substack post recently.

It had an arresting photo.

I'm going to put this up on the screen for people who were watching instead of just listening.

You see in this photo something you don't normally see.

The young kid laying on a couch

talking on an old-fashioned hardwired landline, the whole curly wire and everything.

Here's what the author of this essay, Priscilla Harvey, wrote. I bought my kids an old-fashioned phone to keep smartphones out of their hands while still letting them chat with friends, but it has turned into the sweetest, most unexpected surprise, my son's new daily conversation with his grandmothers. This is how I keep finding him, stretched out on the couch, phone pressed to his ear, intently

focus and listening to the matriacs of our family.

I hear laughter and sense a deeper connection blossoming in these conversations.

There's no scrolling, no distractions, no comparisons, no dopamine hits the chase.

Instead, he is just listing the stories, asking questions, and having the comfort of knowing

someone who loves

him is listing on the other end of the line. Somehow what was once ordinary in my childhood

...