Mediaboss Marketing

Last year, tech companies couldnt get enough of letting you use their products less.

Executives at Apple and Google unveiled on-device features to help people monitor and restrict how much time they spent on their phones. Facebook and Instagram, two of the biggest time sucks on the planet, also rolled out time spent notifications and the ability to snooze their apps new features meant to nudge people to scroll through their apps a little less mindlessly.

These companies all became fluent in the language of time well spent, a movement to design technology that respects users time and doesnt exploit their vulnerabilities. Since the movement sprang up nearly seven years ago, it has invoked mass introspection and an ongoing debate over technology use, which people blame for a swath of societal ills including depression and suicide, diminished attention spans, and decreased productivity.

But a year after Big Tech rolled out their time-well-spent features, it doesnt seem like theyre working: The time we spend on our devices just keeps increasing.

Fortunately, the problem might not be that bad in the first place. Though correlations exist, theres no causal link between digital media usage and the myriad problems some speculate it causes.

Every time new tech comes out, theres a moral panic that this is going to melt our brains and destroy society, Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, told Recode. In almost every case, we sort of look back at these things and laugh.

What time well spent has done is spurred a whole cottage industry to help people digitally detox, and its being led in part by the big tech companies responsible for and that benefit from our reliance on tech in the first place. As Quartz writer Simone Stolzoff put it, Time well spent is having its Kendall Jenner Pepsi moment. What began as a social movement has become a marketing strategy.

Politicians are also jumping on the dogpile. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has proposed a bill to reduce what some call social media addiction by banning infinite scrolling and autoplay and by automatically limiting users to spending a maximum of 30 minutes a day on each platform. The bill currently has no cosponsors and is unlikely to go to a vote, but does demonstrate that the topic is on lawmakers radar.

These efforts, however, have yet to dent our insatiable need for tech.

By all accounts, the time we spend attached to our digital devices is growing.

American adults spent about 3 hours and 30 minutes a day using the mobile internet in 2019, an increase of about 20 minutes from a year earlier, according to measurement company Zenith. The firm expects that time to grow to over four hours in 2021. (Top smartphone users currently spend 4 hours and 30 minutes per day on those devices, according to productivity software company RescueTime, which estimates average phone usage to be 3 hours and 15 minutes per day).

Were spending more time online because pastimes like socializing that used to happen offline are shifting online, and were generally ceding more of our days to digital activities.

The overall time Americans spend on various media is expected to grow to nearly 11 hours per day this year, after accounting for declines in time spent with other media like TV and newspapers that are increasingly moving online, according to Zenith. Mobile internet use is responsible for the entirety of that growth.

Nearly a third of Americans said they are online almost constantly in 2019, a statistic that has risen substantially across age groups since the study was conducted the year before.

Not all our online activities are on the uptick, however.

Online measurement company SimilarWeb has found that time spent with some of the most popular social media apps, like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, has declined in the wake of time well spent efforts though the decline could instead reflect the waning relevance of those social media behemoths. At least for now, the average amount of time on those apps is still near historic highs:

Since overall time spent online is going up, the data suggests were just finding other places online to spend our time, like with newer social media like TikTok or with online video games.

Some have argued that sheer time spent isnt important psychologically, but rather its what were doing with that time online. And what were doing is very fragmented.

Rather than use our devices continually, we tend to check them throughout the day. On average, people open their phones 58 times a day (and 30 of those times are during the workday), according to RescueTime. Most of those phone sessions are under two minutes.

Even on our phones, we dont stick to one thing. A recent study published in the journal Human-Computer Interaction found that people switched on average from one screen activity to another every 20 seconds.

And whats the result of all these hours of fragmented activity? Just one in 10 people RescueTime surveyed said they felt in control of how they spend their day.

Its tough to separate finger-wagging judgments about tech from valid concerns about how tech could be degrading our lives. But the perception, at least, that tech is harming our lives seems to be very real.

Numerous articles instruct people on how to put down their phones. And richer Americans including the people making the technology in the first place are desperately trying to find ways to have their kids spend less time with screens.

MITs Zuckerman suggests building better pro-civic social media, since he thinks its already clear were going to spend lots of our time online anyway.

I am deeply worried about the effects of the internet on democracy. On the flip side, I was deeply worried about democracy before everyone was using the internet, he said. What we probably have to be doing is building social media thats good for us as a democracy.

This social media would emphasize the best aspects of social media and would better defend against scourges like content that promotes political polarization and misinformation. He gave the example of gell.com, which uses experts to outline arguments for and against major social issues, and then encourages user participation to further develop and challenge the ideas.

Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, thinks were overusing the language of addiction when it comes to technology usage. If we really want to limit our technology usage, he told Recode, solutions are close at hand.

We want to think that were getting addicted because an addiction involves a pusher, a dealer someones doing it. Whereas when we call it what it really is, which is distraction now in the US, we dont like to face that fact that means we have to do something thats no fun, Eyal said.

Instead of blaming tech companies, he asks people, Have you tried to turn off notifications, for Gods sake? Have you planned your day so that you dont have all this white space where youre free to check your phone all the time?

For those who are addicted a percentage he says is probably in line with the portions of the population that are addicted to anything else, like alcohol or gambling he thinks tech companies should notify users that theyre in the top percentiles of usership and offer them resources, such as software tools and professional assistance (and his book).

In the meantime, the time we spend on our digital devices will continue to increase, and theres still a need for conclusive research about whether that actually matters. Perhaps while we wait for clarity, we can turn off our notifications about how much time we spend on our phones.

Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.

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Americans spent about 3.5 hours per day on their phones last year a number that keeps going up despite the "time well spent" movement -...

The City of Boulders Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) Departmentisseeking publicfeedbackon a draft approach and an evaluation of potential actions to manage irrigable agricultural landwithlarge populations of prairie dogs.

OSMPsidentificationofa draft approach and its evaluation of potential actions isaresponse todirection from the Boulder City Council,following a recommendation from the Open Space Board of Trustees(OSBT)last spring, to undertake an expedited public process to look at agricultural uses on the citys northern grasslands. Potential management actions evaluated includeways to help foster soil health and carbon sequestration and options forbothnon-lethal and lethal control measures.

The city welcomes public feedback on the draft approach and the evaluation of potential actions online at http://bit.ly/Actions-Approach until 5 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 16.Community membersare invitedto theOSMPHub at 2520 55thSt. from5to7p.m.,Monday, Jan. 27, and2 to 4 p.m.,Tuesday, Feb. 4,if they needassistancein using the citysonline inputtool.

City policiesplans and ordinances have prioritized non-lethal control measures and have sought to protect prairie dogs and their habitats because they are important in helping to maintain healthy ecosystems. However, monitoring has indicated that OSMP irrigable agricultural lands currently have thehighest levels of prairie dog occupation they have seen since the department beganprairie dogmapping in 1996.

Such high abundance of prairie dogs on irrigable landsnorth of Bouldermakesit difficult forOSMPand farmers and rancherstofulfillagricultural-related open space purposes in the city charter and to implement soil carbon farming and climate mitigation practices.Elected and appointed leaders, in their direction to staff last May,indicatedthat it may beinfeasible to address large prairie dog populations on agricultural lands in a timely or economical fashion by current non-lethal practices alone.Currently,the city has 967 acres of irrigable agricultural land that is occupied by prairie dogs,butitcan only accommodate the relocation ofabout40 acres of prairie dog colonies each yearbecause of costs, contractor availabilityand permitting requirements.

The preliminary potential managementactionsevaluated as part of this public process focus on thesemanagement categories:

Comments received throughTuesday, Feb. 4, will be provided to the Open Space Board of Trustees(OSBT)in advance of a study sessionWednesday, Feb. 12, when board members willdiscussstaffs potential strategies and actions.Community members are welcome to provide comments to the OSBT during a public comment period before theWednesday,Feb. 12,study session.Staff willthenuse community input and OSBT feedback on the draft approach and evaluated actions to developfinal recommendations, which the department expects to present to the OSBTduring a public hearingin March.

For more information, please visit the project website or call OSMP at 303-441-3440.

Published: Jan. 6, 2020

Phillip Yates, Media Relations, 303-349-2438Bryan Rachal, Media Relations, 303-441-3155

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City Seeks Input on Potential Approach and Actions to Manage Irrigable Agricultural Areas With a High Abundance of Prairie Dogs - City of Boulder

Johnson will govern like he campaigned, by running away from the press.

Hes barely back from his post-election Carribean holiday but we it is already clear that Boris Johnson will govern as he campaigned by hiding from the press.

After Boris Johnson chickened out of an interview with Andrew Neil during the election campaign, his ministers are now going to avoid appearing on BBCs Newsnight.

According to the Mail, the governments excuse for this is that Newnight has appointed a journalist called Lewis Goodall as its policy editor and hes apparently too left-wing.

Goodall has joined Newnight from Sky News, where he worked as a political correspondent for right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

The governments evidence that Goodall is anti-Tory, the Mail says, is that he is the author of a string of aggressively anti-Tory comments on social media.

So what did he say? F**k Tory scum. All hail Corbyn.? No, just the kind of reasoned criticism every political journalist makes about any party. The most anti-Tory example the government/Mail could dig out is this one:

And of course, hes also been critical of Labour too. He called Labours election performance lamentably bad and accused Corbyn of looking stiff and robotic at Prime Ministers Questions.

The government/Mails other piece of evidence against Goodall is that, when he was a student, a Guardian profile described him as a Labour activist.

But plenty of political journalists used to be active in politics in their youth.

Today Show presenter Nick Robinson was the chair of the Young Conservatives and the BBCs Andrew Neil used to be a Conservative Party researcher and now edits the right-wing Spectator magazine.

Yet Johnson dodged Neils election interview and his ministers have been told to avoid Robinsons Today Show. So it looks like its not Lewis Goodall but any media scrutiny they are afraid of.

This impression is reinforced by government moves to change the location of press briefings from parliament to Downing Street where they can control the guestlist more tightly.

At present, any media outlet with a parliamentary pass can attend government press briefings. If theyre moved to Downing Street, publications which displease the government could be disinvited.

If this is the case, lets hope that the favoured journalists and outlets stand up for press freedom and boycott the briefings.

Joe Lo is a co-editor of Left Foot Forward

Like this article? Left Foot Forward relies on support from readers to sustain our progressive journalism. Can you become a supporter for 5 a month?

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Johnson's government continue to hide from press scrutiny by dodging Newsnight - Left Foot Forward

A high-tech space capsule malfunctioned Friday morning during its first NASA test mission, temporarily stranding the unmanned spacecraft in the wrong place and dealing a blow to Boeing, its developer.

The failed launch is a setback for NASA as it scrambles to finish work on a pair of new spacecraft that the space agency wants for carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. The new capsules could finally end the American space programs long reliance on Russian capsules.

Boeings CST-100 Starliner transport launched atop a two-stage Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:36 a.m.

The initial phase of the mission went according to plan. A few minutes after launch, NASA announced that the Atlas had completed its burn. United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin consortium that provided the rocket, went on social media to boast of its success.

We had a successful launch and initial indications are that we demonstrated the launch-vehicle test objectives, performance enhancements and the mission-unique modifications developed for the safety of human spaceflight, ULA president Tory Bruno said.

NASA expected the Boeing capsule to rendezvous with the International Space Station at its orbit some 250 miles above Earth on Saturday. A successful meet-up could have cleared the way for NASA to use the Starliner to carry astronauts to the space station beginning in mid-2020.

But it was soon apparent that the 15-foot-diameter Starliner had screwed up. Starliner has an off-nominal insertion, but Boeing has spacecraft control, NASA announced. The guidance and control team is assessing their next maneuver.

It turned out that the 15-ton capsule, which is designed to operate mostly autonomously with very little interaction with a human crew, mistimed the firing of its maneuvering thrusters. The ill-timed burn gobbled up precious fuel.

Now short on gas, the Starliner wasnt able to maneuver its way to the space station, NASA determined. "It's safe to take off the table at this point, given the amount of fuel that we burned," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a hastily-called news conference.

The good news for Boeing and NASA is that the Starliner, which has been in development since 2010 at a cost of more than $4 billion, is safe where it is, orbiting around 120 miles over Earth. Mission controllers expect to be able to land the capsule at a military missile range in White Sands, New Mexico as early as Sunday.

In the meantime, Boeing and NASA can still conduct some trials with the temporarily stranded capsule. The team is assessing what test objectives can be achieved, NASA stated.

Chicago-based Boeing tried to put on a happy face. We are proud of the team for their professionalism and quick action to protect the vehicle and enable a safe return, the company stated. We look forward to reviewing and learning from the data that has been generated from this mission so far.

But further root-cause analysis is needed, Boeing conceded.

SpaceX, which scored a $2-billion NASA contract to develop its own Dragon capsule, remained silent on social media while the Starliner fiasco unfolded. The Hawthorne, California-based rocket company stands the benefit the most from the Starliners stranding.

Starliner and Dragon are broadly similar and, under NASAs plan, would perform the same kinds of missions. Having access to two separate capsule designs, each backing up the other, could help NASA wean itself off of Russias Soyuz capsules. The Russian capsules have been the only way to get to and from the International Space Station since NASA retired its last Space Shuttle back in 2011.

SpaceX actually beat Boeing to the station. An unmanned, passenger-capable Dragon docked with the orbital lab back in March. SpaceX expects to carry astronauts for the first time in 2020. If Fridays mishap delays Starliners transition to routine, manned missions, Dragon could in theory take up the slack.

But Dragon has suffered its own accidents. The same capsule that completed the initial hook-up with the International Space Station back in March was destroyed a few weeks later during a botched ground test of its thrusters.

At the Friday press conference, NASA administrator Bridenstine urged calm. The Starliners stranding wouldnt have endangered the crews lives had anyone actually been on board, Bridenstine explained. In fact, he said, an on-board crew might have been able to troubleshoot the thruster problem, correcting the capsules course before it wasted its fuel.

The NASA administrator declined to say whether Boeing would be able to meet its 2020 deadline for manned flights with Starliner. I think it's too early for us to make that assessment.

The U.S. Air Force put an optimistic cap on an anxious day for the American space program, in the form of a social-media post from the 45th Space Wing, which manages the Cape Canaveral launch site. Trial and error are building blocks to great success, the wing stated.

Read more:
NASA Mission to Space Station Goes Horribly Wrong - The Daily Beast

After being accused of abusing his power and obstructing Congress, President Donald Trump was impeached on Wednesday by the House of Representatives. The Senate is set to hold a trial early next year to determine whether the president should be removed from office. Trump is the third U.S. president to be impeached.

"We gather today under the dome of this temple of democracy to exercise one of the most solemn powers that this body can take: The impeachment of the President of the United States," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday. "If we do not act now we would be derelict in our duty. It is tragic that the President's reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice."

Despite the House vote, Trump is still president, and it's unlikely that two-thirds of the Republican-controlled Senate will vote to convict and remove him from office. For that to happen, 20 Republican senators would need to defy party and vote against Trump.

Impeachment vote

The Washington Post

The road to impeachment has been controversial and polarized, to put it mildly. Democrats have generally framed the months-long impeachment inquiry as a necessary check on a clear abuse of presidential power and, subsequently, an obstruction of Congress.

Meanwhile, Trump has spearheaded the GOP's strategy, which has been to flatly deny the claim that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine in exchange for personal political favors, and to paint the inquiry as the latest in a series of bad-faith attempts (or, in Trumpian terms: "witch hunt," "scam," "hoax") by Democrats to bring down the president by any means necessary.

In short, it's a mess a sad mess. Both sides explicitly agreed on that much this week, though for different reasons, of course. To help make sense of it all, the Harvard Gazette asked some of the university's expert alumni about what impeachment means for Trump and the state of our politics and media. Here's what a few of them had to say.

David Gergen, J.D. Former White House adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Public Service Professor of Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School.

Alice Stewart. CNN political analyst, former communications director for presidential campaigns of Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"There are no winners or losers in impeachments, there are simply political consequences and collateral damage. The saga of the Democrat impeachment of President Donald Trump has been three years in the making: starting on election night in 2016, with the final chapter being written on Election Day of 2020.

The impeachment in the Democrat-led House of Representatives was predicted, an acquittal in the Republican-led Senate is expected, and the consequences for the 2020 election remain to be seen. If history is any guide, I expect the impeachment quest to ultimately be beneficial to President Trump and conservatives, and damaging to Democrats who sought to subvert the outcome of the 2016 election. The real damage will be in swing districts, congressional districts won by President Trump in 2016 that are currently held by Democrats. Their vote for impeachment is almost a certain first step to being voted out of office."

Nancy R. Gibbs. Former editor in chief, Time magazine. Lombard Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

"The dramatic democratization of media since then has brought all kinds of benefits, but at a moment like this we are also weighing the costs. We are watching lawmakers talk past one another to distinct audiences who can't hear each other; we've seen partisan identity, fueled by partisan media, become the defining division of our time, quite apart from differences over issues or ideology.

For more and more people, team red and team blue have become their church; the mainstream media is no longer gospel. So we should differentiate between media, which is arguably more powerful than ever, and the press, which still has a crucial civic obligation to fulfill and yet faces economic, political, and cultural challenges unlike any we've ever seen before."

Joseph S. Nye Jr., Ph.D. '64. Author of "Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump" (2020). Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School.

"In the role of commander in chief, presidents have a lot of leeway in foreign policy, but it is not unlimited. As Edward Corwin once wrote, the Constitution creates "an invitation to struggle" for control of foreign policy. President Trump had the right to define the American national interest in Ukraine as corruption rather than defense against Russia, but when he withheld, without explanation, funds that Congress had appropriated for the latter cause, Congress had the right to investigate, and Trump did not have the right to obstruct Congress.

President Trump also had the right to ask President [Volodymyr] Zelensky for a favor, but not one for personal gain that involved foreign involvement in our elections (which the Founders warned against). Corruption is the abuse of public power for personal gain, and that high immorality was at issue when Trump invited Zelensky to announce an investigation of a principal likely opponent in the 2020 election."

Leonard L. Glass. Contributing author, "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" (2017). Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

"Mr. Trump, caught in the humiliating spotlight of impeachment, will react as he always does: Deny any responsibility for his predicament and seek to degrade and vilify his accusers.

His disparagement of the truth-tellers who testified before Congress reliably predicts his response to impeachment: claims of victimization and a thirst for revenge.

From a psychological perspective, Trump's impeachment has played out with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Arising from character flaws that were clearly evident at his inauguration, his impeachment inexorably has traced that classic arc. He remains blind to his offenses, insisting he wrote a "perfect" letter and has been subjected to a witch hunt. That is Mr. Trump's hallmark: externalizing all blame as though his inflated self-image would be irreparably punctured by any acknowledgment of his own imperfection."

To read the full questions and answers, head over to the Harvard Gazette.

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Trump's been impeached here's what Harvard scholars believe will happen next - Big Think