'The attention economy is in hyperdrive’: how tech shaped the 2010s
We thought tech would bring us closer together. Instead it has scrambled our minds, our politics and our relationships. Can we burst our filter bubbles?
In 2010, I joined Twitter. This momentous development went unnoticed by the world’s press – but to be fair, it went almost unnoticed by me, too. Certainly, I had no particular trepidation about getting involved in social media. The internet still embodied more promise than threat: the iPad was just arriving; Uber and Airbnb were finding their feet; “gamification” was going to solve everything from obesity to voter apathy, by turning tedious chores into fun digital challenges with points and prizes; the Arab spring, coordinated on social media, was a few months away. This, before the teenage anxiety epidemic, before and the alt-right and “fake news”. In October 2010, the Guardian news blog ran a brief item on a
