Chris J Wilson

Attention is one of the most valuable resources around [ˆ1].

Tech giant compete for even more ways to grab our attention, and content creators now hire dedicated thumbnail creators to increase their click through rates and so ensure their profitability.

I’m sure you’ve experienced a moment, probably in the last week, maybe in the last day, where you felt your button’s being pushed. Something that either deliberately made you angry, or vague so it made you curious. If I’m honest, it’s something I think about all the time in the writing I do (although i’m trying not to fall into that trap sometimes). In fact, on my walk this morning I saw my local Indian restaurant is closing down…so it can move to a new bigger location. That sentence is a perfect example of this kind of “tension, release” type writing.

Sometimes it’s just plain clickbait, other times it’s not deceptive, but still manipulates your emotions — like my previous example.

This situation presents us all with a dilemma.

Do we use the one ring?

In the fellowship of the rings, the council of Elrond has a dilemma; use the one ring against Sauron, or not.

Knowing the end of the Lord of the Rings, it’s obvious they shouldn’t, but from their position, it’s not clear. It is a great weapon, filled with great power, it could help them defeat their enemy.

In the end, they have the wisdom to not use the weapon and destroy it.

In real life we rarely make this choice. Instead we decide that we are the noble and right ones, therefore it’s okay for US to use this power (but they are bad and evil and so it would be wrong for them to).

Going against this logic is naïve.

In many situations it means we lose and they win, and that can mean real suffering. However, the example of the one ring should remain with us. We can win but in fact lose. By using the ring, we can become the same thing we hate.

True wisdom involves knowing when it is right to compromise on some values for other ones; fake wisdom abandons all principles for power instantly.

So what about attention?

Respecting other people’s attention

What if we treated each others attention with respect? If we used some of the principles of being “attention grabbing” to be clear and informative without hijacking people’s focus.

In generally I think this means we should avoid inflammatory language and above all make people not feel tricked.

Don’t validate the attention mongers

Today I saw a thumbnail for a video of “essential” tools.

In the thumbnail there was a pair of AirPod Maxes.

I felt that inflammatory reaction and wanted to watch the video and leave an angry reply about how they couldn’t possibly “essential” and even headphones weren’t.

But I stopped (this time).

Thousands of others didn’t (judging by the views), but the more of us who resist, the better for the internet it will be.

[ˆ1]: Judging by current stock prices, perhaps compute power is the most valuable resource right now?

In some ways, I miss my iPhone SE. With the renewed rumours of an iPhone SE 2 (fool me once…) I thought I’d finish writing a post I started on the benefits of small phones.

Pocketable

I have the smaller iPhone Xs but even this beast can be difficult to fit in some of my pockets! Every now and then, I accidentally set off Siri as my phone gets squeezed in my pocket.

With the old iPhone SE size phone, I can’t remember ever having issues with buttons being accidentally pressed. Admittedly, siri was on the homebutton back then but there was still the volume button.

One Handed

I have larger hands and long fingers but I often default to the bird pecking approach to using the iPhone Xs. It’s not terrible, but I miss the ease of using one hand and being able to touch the whole screen. Not to mention how secure it felt in my hand all the time.

Popular in Poland - price?

This is a business point but a year or so ago, I noticed that the iPhone SE/ the iPhone 5s? was clearly the most popular phone around. Maybe not more than all the android phones combined, but more than any other individual model.

The price was surely a big part of that for a country with slower mean salaries than say the US or UK. Many of those users wouldn’t replace an SE with any regular iPhone due to the price. That’s potentially a lot of lossed customers and service revenue.

From the personal side, I find it harder to recommend an apple device to Polish friends as it can be a signifcant percentage of someone’s sallary.

No other companies are doing it

One of the things that is great about Android is the variety. If you need a specific type of device, you can get it. It’s basically the free market dream. But, there aren’t any companies making small phones anymore.

That’s a real shame as some users do want smaller phones.

Wouldn’t it be great if Apple was the company offering more variety than the whole Android ecosystem (at least in some aspect).

Less distracting

Personally, I find smaller phones discourage me from fidgetting with them. Perhaps it’s just not looking at YouTube or maybe it’s just harder to use (which encourages you not to use it).

Perhaps that’s a strange idea — the device is better because it’s worse…

Helps with other issues

As the iPhone SE was simplified, it had some unexpected benefits. For example, as the iPhone SE’s screen was smaller and lower resolution than the iPhone 6S (which had much the same hardware), it had better battery life and faster performance.

Those are significant benefits.

Admittedly, there were some downsides but perhaps an iPhone SE 2 would have some performance related benefits.

Will it happen?

I’ve had my phones of an iPhone SE 2 or SE version of the iPhone X (an iPhone SE X if you will 🥁) raised before only for nothing to come. Maybe the same will happen again… but perhaps this time something is coming.

I guess we’ll see.

Well I finally did it. I switched from my UK based Apple iTunes account to a Polish based one. A couple of years ago (sometime after June 23, 2016) I realised I probably wouldn’t be returning to the UK in the short run and looked into changing to a Polish account. The additional benefits of paying less for the same products and spending money from my account which is more regularly topped up were key factors. But there was an issue. Switching accounts ends any subscriptions and a couple of years ago I had a few (Apple music, Ulysses, FitStar and a couple more). So I was stuck, especially as they didn’t run out at the same time. I would have to lose key apps while I waited for my other subscriptions to expire. This morning I finally made the jump. I had moved away from some of these subscription apps (YouTube music, where I switched my Google account to a Polish one no problem and iA Writer) and so I was finally free to make the jump. I still lost another few months of my Drafts subscription and I’ll have to wait longer for AppleTV+ or other subscription services, but the long-term benefits are worth it for me.

I just wish Apple made switching countries easier, I completely understand why they don’t want to (preventing abuse) but it sucks to be caught in the crosshairs.

There’s a piece of data that makes me the most skeptical regarding voice assistants is how (in general) younger people prefer to text rather than call. Perhaps that reflects that younger people are less willing to use a voice assistant than type commands. On the other hand, I know many parents who say that their kids “talk to Google” or Alexa. Not having a smart speaker probably makes me biased here, but I still wonder if trying to make voice the primary method of interaction is flawed.

To investigate for myself, I decided to set a challenge for the week.

Try to use Siri for all my interactions.

I’ve already had to set up some new Siri shortcuts to do this and I hope it will give me a different perspective on voice assistants.