The Sirens' Call
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“An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics.” —New York Times
“Brilliant book… Reading it has made me change the way I work and think.” —Rachel Maddow
From the New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered...
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The Sirens' Call
Let us begin with a story from Odysseus's journey. In book twelve of the Odyssey, our hero is about to depart the island of the goddess Circe when she gives him some crucial advice about how to navigate the perils of the next leg of his voyage.
"Pay attention," she instructs him sternly:
First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.
Odysseus listens as Circe provides him with a plan: stuff wax in the ears of your crew, she says, so they cannot hear the Sirens, and have them bind you to the mast of the ship until you have sailed safely past.
Odysseus follows the plan to a tee. Sure enough, when the Sirens' song hits his ears, he motions to his men to loosen him so that he can follow it....