This book was more interesting than I feared. I didn't mind some of the in-depth analysis of modern art. A lot of the opinions in the book I agree with, but are also massively inconvenient for pairing up with what I enjoy doing in this world. Not so much the social media bits, specifically, but the general disdain for technologies war on our attention.
Social Media makes more money if you're unsatisfied, envious, and anxious.
Doing nothing enables you to see everything around you, that you're missing all the time you're doing something. Silence isn't hearing nothing, it's listening to everything. In the same way doing nothing is what grounds us with reality. We are not the fictionalized versions of ourselves that exist online. We are not our "brand". We are much more complex and ever-changing according to our context, our history, and our relationships.
The only things that you can really say are "true" are those things around you. The ground you walk on. The trees in your back yard. The birds singing. The conversations had face to face.
We owe a great deal of appreciation to the simple concept of "maintenance". The simple act of caring to somethings needs is not a "for-granted" situation. It takes prolonged dedication and rededication. We all our our mothers, fathers, and anyone who's helped us for our own sake a great deal of gratitude more than we give them. Maintaining a relationship, maintaining a house, maintaining a child. None of these are particularly exciting endeavors. They don't promise "bold and new". The promise, at best, a deepening of the existing goods that are right in front of us. The strengthen our bond with the people, places, and things about which we take care.
There is an infinitely detailed world around each and every one of us, yet we only perceive some small subset of the available details. The author utilized a "Blender" (3d software) metaphor, describing that "Renders" of a scene will invariably represent only a small portion of the model, and the appearance of that portion will be dependent on the parameters of the render. In very much the same way our realities are rendered by our conscious mind. We are the rendering engine and we only notice what we notice. When you buy a car, suddenly you see other instances of the same make and model as your car everywhere. They were there all along, but you weren't primed to see them, therefore you didn't. It's like they didn't exist. The same concept applies to things like inequality. Outright racist or sexist remarks may be noticed by all, but subtler expressions of racist or sexist behaviors may not be noticed those not in the minority class.
There is an absolute void of context on Twitter. The public nature of any tweet means you are only capable of telling one version of a story to any potential audience member - your parents, friends, lovers, future employers, and worst enemies are jammed together. Any natural form of communication is bound to spatial and temporal context. The people here now are going to hear what you're saying and be able to relate it to what's been said, what's been happening, and who you are in al of those things. This doesn't work online.