Book cover of Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

Book description

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Stand Out of Our Light as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is a rare book. It is written by a philosopher. It can be read in an afternoon. And it will change your life. Forget your next self-help book. Read this instead. In Stand Out of Our Light, James Williams gives a straightforward (but extremely satisfying) account of the digital ‘attention economy’ and what is wrong with it. Williams used to work for Google, before he realised that things weren’t quite right. After all, the world built by big technology companies isn’t the one many of us would choose.

In his breathtaking book Stand Out of Our Light, James Williams deftly asks: what do we really pay when we pay attention? “You pay with all of the things you could have attended to but didn’t: all of the goals you didn’t pursue, all of the actions you didn’t take, and all of the possible yous you could have been, had you attended to those other things."

Digital distractions keep you from doing what you want to do, being who you want to be, wanting what you want to want. What do you pay when you pay attention?…

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