What?

Whilst the fight over Twitter's future was going on, I kinda got a sickness in my stomach over how many people cared about this billionaire's purchase – whilst there's so many more thoughts that should be taking our attention.

I want to start a movement – a small one – but one with a powerful design that makes individuals realise how much we've been hacked by algorithms of platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

Unless you consider 10 years of a life being spent in-front a screen a meaningful and fulfilling life, keep reading.

Not only over our attention, but in the pursuit for profit for shareholders, and over enough years continuing down this path, these systems will have its' users lead less fulfilling and meaningful lives, and overall will have their users lose close to a decade of time that could've otherwise been spent improving and experiencing ourselves, and the world.

Firstly, these algorithms, they work really, really well.

Secondly, all of this is already well known to the general population – possibly not to the extent that advertising data scientists know this, or how humans are vastly less unique than we believe ourselves to be – but the fact these systems aren't being fought in any meaningful way is starting to become worrisome.

I believe a campaign is overdue to undo some of the many problems that these systems are starting to create among huge amounts of the population (age not being a discriminating factor here).

The aim of the design is to produce a powerful and individualistic message, without it becoming a "culty", proud or obnoxious viral marketing campaign. Something that wouldn't be shared on social media, but something where you would see a poster within a city and jump back to understanding that there is:

1. a lot of life to live – outside the 1170px × 2532px sitting 1 – 1.5ft in-front of your face
2. humanity isn't operating at it's full potential. We're being hampered as a species, and in my opinion, in a way that all but ensures that the immense progress seen over in the medical, societal, political, and technological spaces over the past century will start to slow – in a direct response because of how we've engineered these attention hacking machines to work it's magic on us. (Here's some pretty funny direct proof)

Aeroplane Mode

Based on the Lyrics of Shakka's song "Intro", one of the most powerful tools we have to fight this already exists on every phone produced after 2010 – without the need to invent a new app, convince people to hand over $4.99 for some focus-mode or productivity tracking app.

The one button that combats this fight for attention, and brings on a quiet, technical rebellion to these systems.

I haven't really thought about how this spreads, but the symbolism people have attached to this icon – and thanks to Apple, it's colour as well – is already pretty appealing.

It symbolises "the offline" without rejecting modern society and connectivity with family, friends and the outside world.

The only other thing I want to produce as part of this campaign is a website that you have to trigger Aeroplane mode in order to use it. Similar to https://boingboing.net/2017/08/24/a-website-that-only-works-offl.html