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Listen: Former Googler Talks About How Close We Are to 'Brave New World'

September 19, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Technology gives us constant distractions and lets us create our own content to distract others with Facebook posts, tweets and Snapchat exchanges. But will constant distraction be our undoing?

Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, joined Tuesday’s “The Glenn Beck Radio Program” to talk about how technology is affecting our lives – possibly to our ruin.

He analyzed how distraction is affecting us. With only a finite amount of attention in the world, everyone is competing for it.

“It’s this race to the bottom of the brain stem for whatever works at getting attention,” Harris said.

He and Glenn discussed a potential way to rein in technology, with Harris posing a theory that the energy industry’s practice of decoupling could be helpful.

Glenn was concerned about the implications of government control in that idea.

“It starts to roll into the Big Brother, ‘Brave New World,’” he said. “We’re just in this weird place that I don’t know if mankind has ever been in before, that if we don’t do this right we’re really going to screw ourselves.”

Listen to the full segment for more on our “Brave New World” danger and why media theorist Neil Postman predicted the risk of today’s social media.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Tristan Harris, he is the founder of Time Well Spent. He is a former Google design ethicist. Gave a great -- a great talk on, how do we change this?

Tristan, how are you?

TRISTAN: Glenn, it's great to be here. I'm great. Thank you for having me.

GLENN: So I'm so happy to see that I'm not the only one feeling this way and not the only one trying to figure a way out. But it's almost impossible, at least at my level to -- to even talk to people who are even thinking this way. No, I want to design the website in a way that it gets people back to their own life, faster.

TRISTAN: Right. Yeah. Completely. Well, I have to say, Glenn, I was also really moved by your interview with Dave Reuben, talking about how the race for attention -- when you were on television, and the race for good ratings affected, you know, your own life. And I think this is the thing people miss about the tech industry is that no matter what good intentions, Facebook, Google, you know, Snapchat has, to improve people's lives, they're cut in this race for attention.

And as I said in the TED talk, and as you know so well, it's this race to the bottom of the brainstem, for whatever works at getting attention. And there's no escaping that. Because there's only so much attention. There's only so much time in people's lives, only so many hours in a day.

And it's not growing. So, you know, that the race is only going to get more competitive. And as it gets more competitive, it becomes this race for figuring out what pushes the buttons in people's brains. And so we have to get out of this race for attention.

And like you said, you can't ask anyone who is in the attention economy to not do what they're doing.

You can't tell YouTube, "Hey, stop getting so much of people's attention." You can't tell Facebook, "Hey, stop making your product so addictive." You can't tell Snapchat, "Hey, stop manipulating the minds of teenagers to get them sending messages back and forth and hooking them because they're all caught in this race for attention," which is why we need to reform the system one level up. You have to go outside the system. And I'd love to talk to you about that.

GLENN: So what does that even mean? How do you go one level up? What is one level up?

TRISTAN: Well, it's sort of like the tragedy of the common. So you can't ask any one of the actors to do something different than what they're doing. They need to be able to coordinate their rates for attention.

So, you know, one way to go one level up is to go to the government, which is not very pleasant of an idea. Another way to go one level up is to actually go to Apple. So Apple is kind of like the government of the attention economy. Because they create the device upon which everyone else is competing for attention.

And Google is also sort of a mini government of the attention economy. Because they create kind of the government of who gets the best results, when -- when you search for something.

And Facebook is kind of the government of the attention economy too because they choose who is at the top of your feed. And, currently, they're locked into their own race for attention.

So one of the things is we have to decouple profit from attention. Because as long as those two things are one to one connected, it becomes this race to the bottom. And we actually did this with energy, where there's only so much energy available to sell people. And energy companies used to have this incentive of, I make more money, the more energy you use. So I actually want you to leave the lights on. Leave the faucets on.

And, you know, that created a problem, where -- where, you know, we -- we waste more energy. We waste -- or we pollute the environment, the more money the companies make.

And in the US, we went through a change called decoupling, which decoupled through a little bit of self-regulation among the energy companies, where they basically capped how much money energy companies pocketed directly from the more energy people used. And then the remaining energy -- when you use a lot of energy, all that extra energy, they priced it higher to disincentivize it. And then they actually used that extra profit, not to capture it for themselves, but to collectively reinvest it into renewable energy infrastructure.

And so I'm wondering whether or not something like that couldn't happen for attention, where companies could profit from some amount of attention were that relationship to exist. But then beyond a certain point, what if everyone was reinvestigating in the greater good of the attention company?

Because, you know, right now, 2 billion people's minds from the moment they wake up in the morning -- you know, they're jacked into this environment -- this digital environment that's controlled by three technology companies, like Apple, Google, and Facebook.

GLENN: Tristan. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

TRISTAN: No. Go ahead.

GLENN: Does it -- does it -- does it -- I mean, A, I'm really glad somebody is thinking about this. Because I think about this stuff all the time, and I don't hear anybody really talking about it.

TRISTAN: Yeah.

GLENN: And it's a little hair-raising because what you're even saying starts to roll into the, you know, big brother, Brave New World. I mean, it could so easily go into -- we're just in this weird place that I don't know if mankind has ever been in before, that if we don't do this right, we're really going to screw ourselves.

TRISTAN: No. You know, you're so dialed into this, Glenn. You're totally right. And, you know, I studied this for three or four years. I was a design ethicist at Google, where literally the way I spent every single day studying, what does it mean to ethically steer people's attention?

And it really, like you said, it's the Brave New World scenario combined with the Big Brother scenario. Because whether we want to admit it or not -- you know, again, 2 billion people from the moment they wake up to every bathroom break, to every coffee line, to going to bed, to every back of the Uber or public transportation, you know, people are glued to their phones. We check them 150 times a day.

And, again, because of this race for attention, these technology products are not neutral. Each one, in trying to do whatever it can to get attention.

So they deploy these different persuasive techniques, and it becomes this, you know, amusing ourselves to death, you know, Brave New World scenario.

If you've seen the movie WALL-E, it's like a race to put people with a screen in front of their eyes for as many hours as possible.

GLENN: Yes.

TRISTAN: Consuming for as much as possible, because that's what's most profitable. So it does start to resemble something like the Matrix.

I don't know if you know the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, but in the beginning, he -- Neil Postman, the author contrasts Orwell's vision of the future, which we're all, you know, really ready to oppose. Because it's a form of tyranny. We don't want Big Brother. But then there's this subtler vision of Brave New World that people forget to oppose because there's no face of it. There's no Big Brother.

GLENN: Yes.

TRISTAN: And here's this great line that's -- you know, Orwell was worried about a world where we would ban books. And it says Huxley was worried about a world where no one would want to read a book.

You know, Orwell was worried about the world in which the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley was worried about a world where the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. And, you know, it goes on.

And the point is --

GLENN: We're there.

TRISTAN: Yeah.

GLENN: We are there.

STU: Tristan Harris is with us. Quickly, you had mentioned the manipulation that these companies do for your attention.

And you had a really great example with snap streaks. I don't know Snapchat very well, but can you kind of explain that?

TRISTAN: Absolutely, yeah.

So one thing that I think everybody who uses smart phone in a family is aware of is how this is affecting their kids, especially if they're teenagers.

So Snapchat is the number one way that teenagers in the United States communicate. This is very important. So if you're like me -- you know, I'm 33. You're an adult. You probably use text messaging as your number one way to communicate.

So you live in Texas. And you can imagine living in Snapchat. This is like your dominate way to communicate. And Snapchat figured out a way to hook kids called streaks.

And what that means is they show a number next to every single person that you chat with. And that number is number of days in a row that you continually sent a streak, a message back and forth.

So if you sent a message back and forth 150 days in a row, it shows the number 150 with a higher ball. And it might sound totally innocuous, but it actually causes kids to send all of these empty messages back and forth. They're literally sending photos.

GLENN: Just not to break the streak.

TRISTAN: Just not to break the streak.

GLENN: Wow.

TRISTAN: Just not to break the streak. And they give their password to five other friends when they go on vacation, just because they don't want to lose it.

And so it's like tying two kids -- you know, legs together on a treadmill, on two separate treadmills, and then hitting start. And watching them run like chickens with their heads cut off, passing the football back and forth, just so they don't drop the -- the streak.

And this is, by the way, you know, from a playbook of persuasive techniques that people in the industry know are good at getting people to do things. And you can use it for good.

Like, you can set up a streak for the number of days to the gym that -- the numbers of days you read five pages in a book, that you wanted to make sure you do that habit. So you keep up a streak. It's a powerful motivator.

But what they did is they took this powerful technique, and then they applied it to a vulnerable population. And they applied it to children's sense of belonging with each other. Because now kids define the terms of their friendship, based on whether or not they have a streak or not. It becomes the currency of their friendship.

And so that's what's new about this. People often say -- you know, back in the 1970s, we used to gossip on the telephone all the time. And now if I look at my teenage kids, they're just gossiping on the telephone a different way with Snapchat. There's nothing new or alarming here.

And what's different about this is that your phone in the 1970s didn't have thousands of engineers on the other side of the screen who knew how to -- how to strategically tap two people on the shoulder and make them feel like they're missing out on each other's lives. And to show you -- you know, to have a phone light up and appear in your life exactly when you're most vulnerable.

I mean, for example, it's never been easier to find out that you're missing out on what your friends are doing if you're a teenager.

You know, Snapchat or Instagram benefit if they put that at the top of the feed, not at the bottom, in the same way that Facebook benefits by putting outrageous news at the top of the newsfeed because it's better at getting attention. And so -- go ahead.

GLENN: No. Please, finish.

TRISTAN: Well, so as you said, I don't want to be here dwelling on the problem. I first want to do this because it's important people understand the problem.

And it's honestly one of the biggest problems of our time because it's infrastructure for solving every other problem.

You know, every other problem, health care, climate change, all these things require us to be able to sustain attention and talk about a complex topic.

And if we're just running around distracted all the time and if the entire next generation is hooked and addicted to their devices and we can't -- you know, we don't develop the capacity for patience or complexity or sitting with each other -- sometimes that's uncomfortable, you know -- you know, it's a delicate thing to be a human being.

The double standard behind the White House outrage

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.