main goal is specifically to explore the United States presidential hopeful

Andrew Yang, and his lesser-known proposal of creating a department of

attention economy, I realized my own political opinion will no doubt reflect

itself in the video. So I will take a moment at the end to share my take on

Andrew yang and my personal position on some policies. If you would prefer to see

that segment first, please skip ahead. It should be titled as politics. The

Democratic primary debate stage is packed.

Each candidate seems to be leaning heavily on signature policies to stand

out in the crowded field. Because of this, we, as potential voters run the risk of

seeing the candidates as single issue politicians. I think it's important to

dig a little deeper and to see what else each candidate has to offer. While

learning about the different candidates, Andrew Yang's website stood out. Unlike

most campaign websites, Andrew Yang's has a large page of listed

policy proposals from his platform which are worth taking a look at. While I won't

explore all of them in this video, I want to give a short introduction to Andrew

Yang and then dive into one specific policy proposal I find particularly

important: the creation of the Department of Attention Economy. In 2017 long before

most politicians even decided they would enter the next presidential race, a

relatively unknown entrepreneur filed for his run as a Democrat in the 2020

elections. Andrew Yang, having never held political

office and previously having very little name recognition, managed to get an

hour-long primetime CNN Town Hall in April 2019 and secured spot in the first

round of the Democratic primary debates. Being in the startup sector since the

90s Andrew yang had an insider's view of the space and in turn the future of the

American job market. He recognized that with technologies rapid rate of

development there came the risk of severe automation. Yang's nonprofit,

Venture for America, created thousands of jobs over the years but he recognized we

needed a bigger approach to meet the challenge of technological unemployment.

One major potential solution, Yang's signature proposal, is called the Freedom

Dividend a form of universal basic income or UBI for short. Universal basic

income is a system where the government issues a set amount of money on a

recurring schedule to the citizens of the country unconditionally except for

age. In Andrew Yang's freedom dividend would be $1,000 a month starting at age

18. Now this is a big idea and when taken seriously prompts a ton

of questions and in-depth discussion. You can read a lot about UBI, listen to

countless discussions about the pros and cons, and I encourage you to do so. But

this is where I would like to take a turn and discuss another issue that Yang

addresses and that I believe deserves our attention. On Yang's website under

the policy link titled "reduce harm to children caused by smartphones", Andrew

yang elaborates that social media and other online apps are currently being

developed to capture our attention with little regard to the mental health of

the person using them. This is an alarming development that becomes very obvious

when you begin to track the amount of time spent on mobile devices. Our

attention is actively being fought for. With the attention economy the concept

begins with the idea that time, our 24 hours in a day, is the scarcest commodity

we have. As other resources such as information and material possessions

become less scarce, this contrast becomes more extreme. Companies are now vying for

our engagement and attention to run ads or gather our information. Twitter,

YouTube, Snapchat, Amazon, Reddit, Facebook. All competing for your eyes and ad

dollars. they are researching and designing their products to better

compete with everyone else for our time. The result? Devices and applications

which at their extreme addict us and monopolize our time and attention with

little regard to our health or well-being. And as of right now we do not

have the framework in place to appropriately respond to the concept

of an attention economy. The writer Matthew Crawford does a great job of

explaining this issue... "The peculiar challenge of our present (one of them

anyway) I think is that we find ourselves at a new stage of capitalism. One that's

predicated on the ever more aggressive appropriation of our attention. Often by

mechanized means. This makes cultivating the habits and pleasures of deep slow

thinking a difficult matter. A new frontier of capitalism

has been opened up by our self-appointed disruptors. It's one where

you win competitive advantage by being the most aggressive in digging up and

monetizing every bit of private headspace." Andrew Yang's solution is the

formation of a department of attention economy. By creating a department Andrew

Yang argues that we can focus on smartphones and social media, gaming and

chat apps, and how to responsibly design and use them. Also, to create a best

practices design philosophy for the industry to minimize the anti-social

impacts of these technologies on children (and I would argue everyone) who

are using them... "One of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to have a

department of the attention economy and say look, we got to clean up the slot

machines that are like hypnotizing and depressing our young people. Okay so what

we do is were going to change the guidelines on like the timing of the reward

mechanisms you have. Where it could even be that like you know a message pops up

and says: 'hey you've been staring at this phone or this app for three hours you

should find a human being or go outside'. " This would be a huge step forward in a

time where it seems like no major institution is doing anything to protect

the sovereignty of our attention. Yes, we can do what we can as individuals. We can

use time tracking apps or make our screens monochrome, for example. But that

still pits us busy people against the companies with teams of experts whose

job it is to maximize the amount of time we spend on their platforms. Experts who

have behavioral and technological tools that we don't have. It's not a fair

relationship. With government articulating and addressing these issues

we can at least have a chance at a level playing field.

Tristan Harris is the director and co-founder of the Center for Humane

Technology and co-founder of the time well-spent movement. He previously worked

at Google as a design ethicist but now has dedicated his efforts to sounding

the alarm about the concerns of companies hijacking our ability to focus

on what's best for us... "Because we don't talk about it a handful of people

working at a handful of Technology companies, through their choices will

steer what a billion people are thinking today. So the internet is not evolving at

random. The reason it feels like it's sucking us in, the way it is,

is because of this race for attention. And it becomes this race to the bottom

of the brainstem of who can go lower to get it. Just imagine there's people who

have some desire about what they want to do and what they want to be thinking

what they want to be feeling and how they want to be informed, and we're all

just tugged into these other directions. And you have a billion people just

tugged into all these different directions. Well imagine an entire design

Renaissance that tried to orchestrate the exact and most empowering time

well-spent way for those timelines to happen." It's clear Tristan Harris with

his background and mission would be a great person to bring on board to tackle

this problem. Andrew yang supports doing just that on

his policy proposal page. Just by looking at this one link on Yang's site I can

say it's apparent he has put some serious time into thinking about this

problem we face. One that has not gained widespread political attention. But one

that deserves it. Even though it is not his flagship proposal,

it makes me confident as a voter to see how he's aware of a vast array of issues

and is looking for solutions. A department of attention economy is a

great start to formulating discussion and action to protect our shared

attention spaces, and to apply guidelines to websites and apps.

It makes me optimistic that this issue has a chance of being addressed on the

debate stage. so a little background on my political perspective on Andrew yang

in the upcoming elections I never have, nor ever see myself supporting Donald

Trump due to his unpresidential behavior, awful

policies, and the vast majority of political decisions. Therefore I will

likely be voting Democrat no matter who the nominee is. I think Andrew yang

brings a unique voice to the Democratic field and he proposes a large number of

policies which I support. I'm especially interested in his policies regarding UBI,

medicare for all, global warming, and of course how technology is affecting our

mental health. That being said I'm looking forward to

listening to all qualifying candidates in the upcoming debates and hopefully

will help elect one of the Democratic primary candidates as president in 2020.

Thank you for watching, and I hope to see you soon. Until next time.