The Big Tune Out

Summary

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The Times Tech Podcast: "The Big Tune Out"

Date: September 24, 2024
Hosts: Danny Fortson (San Francisco) & Katie Prescott (London)
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into Silicon Valley’s growing practice of technology “tuning out”—from luxury retreats for stressed-out tech elites to the grassroots “Tech Shabbat” movement. The episode explores why the architects of our digital world are unplugging, the psychological manipulation built into our devices, and whether we should follow their lead.

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1. Main Theme and Purpose

• Core Question: Why are Silicon Valley leaders, who built the digital world, retreating from it, and what does that say about the technology shaping our lives?
• Focus: The paradox of tech elites disconnecting from devices, the societal impact of constant connectivity, and the grassroots and institutional responses—including retreats like 1440 Multiversity and digital sabbaths.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

The 1440 Multiversity: A Place to Unplug

(03:31–07:53)

• Setting: Former Bible college in the redwoods near Silicon Valley, now a luxury retreat for tech professionals seeking to disconnect.
• Scott Krinz’s Story: Juniper Networks founder, who established 1440 after a personal crisis.

  "Sometimes the best way to go faster is to slow down." —Scott Krinz [07:26]

• Goal: Not just escape, but fostering self-reflection so technology can serve society’s higher purpose.

The Tech Elite’s Double Standard

(08:01–09:17)

• Waldorf Schools: Popular with techies for their “screen-free” ethos.
• Hypocrisy: Tech founders ensure their own kids avoid the products they sell.

  "It's okay to steal lunch money from 100 million kids around the world, but not our kids, right?" —Al Alcorn, relayed by Danny Fortson [09:17]

Tech Shabbat: The Weekly Digital Detox

(12:52–15:51)

• Tech Shabbat Course: Led by Tiffany Shlain, Webby Awards founder, and her family.

  "I think we have a lot more agency than we act like we do... We can also turn it off." —Bluma Schlein, age 9 [13:42]

• Practice: One day each week, the family is screen-free—a tradition now spreading in tech circles.

The Addictive Architecture of Modern Tech

(16:23–19:51)

• Jaron Lanier’s Perspective: VR pioneer, outspoken critic of social media manipulation.

  "We've inadvertently created a system that emphasizes negativity and empowers it... [and] does so universally." —Jaron Lanier [03:55] "The bummer machine... is the use of continuously connected devices... that are calculated to modify us." —Jaron Lanier [18:43]

• Key Insight: Social media algorithms are designed for maximum “engagement”—often by fueling negative emotions and dependency.

The Emotional Toll & Necessity of Boundaries

(20:10–21:51)

• Tech Shabbat’s impact resonates, but adopting it comes with social and psychological barriers.

  "I feel like it's a form of self-defense... it allows me to give a little bit of room to myself." —Ken Goldberg [21:14]

• Rabbi Sidney Mintz underscores the historical precedent for such pauses:

  "Shabbat can be what saves our civilization... our entire society really should be a part of [it] if just to keep our sanity." —Sidney Mintz [22:52]

The Industry’s Reckoning: From “Time Well Spent” to “Human Downgrading”

(24:11–27:40)

• Tristan Harris: Ex-Google design ethicist, founder of Center for Humane Technology.

  "The problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology." —Tristan Harris [24:11] “How do I put red trigger colors on the app? How do I make an Infinite scroll, remove the stopping cue so your mind doesn't know how to wake up?” —Tristan Harris [25:23]

• Race to the Brainstem: Harris recounts how persuasive design shifted from helping to hijacking user psychology.
• Human Downgrading:

  "It's the social climate change of culture... the entire thing is self-reinforcing towards craziness." —Tristan Harris [27:40]

Privilege and the Feasibility of Tuning Out

(29:35–30:02)

• Ken Goldberg: Recognizes that time and resources needed to “tune out” is a privilege not everyone has.

Reclaiming Connection—and its Challenges

(30:02–31:23)

• Gina Pell: Tech entrepreneur finds reconnecting with people deeply affirming but dreads re-entering the digital whirl.

  "I actually feel that technology is a blessing and a curse to me." —Gina Pell [30:28]

• Scott Krinz (1440 founder):

  "To the degree we can affect leaders, it's the greatest upstream leverage that I know..." —Scott Krinz [30:37]

Final Reflections: Personal and Societal Takeaways

(31:23–32:53)

• Danny Fortson: Considers instituting Tech Shabbat in his own family—but like many listeners, struggles to follow through.
• Children’s Imitation: Young kids instinctively treat smartphones as central and desirable, mirroring their parents.

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote & Context | |-----------|--------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 07:26 | Scott Krinz | "Sometimes the best way to go faster is to slow down." | | 09:17 | Al Alcorn (via Danny Fortson) | "It's okay to steal lunch money from 100 million kids around the world, but not our kids, right?" | | 13:42 | Bluma Schlein | "I think we have a lot more agency than we act like we do... We can also turn it off." | | 18:43 | Jaron Lanier | "The bummer machine... is the use of continuously connected devices... that are calculated to modify us." | | 21:14 | Ken Goldberg | "I feel like it's a form of self-defense... it allows me to give a little bit of room to myself." | | 22:52 | Sidney Mintz | "Shabbat can be what saves our civilization... it's not just for Jews anymore, really. It's something that our entire society really should be a part of." | | 24:11 | Tristan Harris | "The problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology." | | 25:23 | Tristan Harris | “How do I put red trigger colors on the app? How do I make an Infinite scroll, remove the stopping cue so your mind doesn't know how to wake up?” | | 27:40 | Tristan Harris | "It's the social climate change of culture... the entire thing is self-reinforcing towards craziness." | | 30:28 | Gina Pell | "I actually feel that technology is a blessing and a curse to me." | | 30:37 | Scott Krinz | "To the degree we can affect leaders, it's the greatest upstream leverage that I know..." |

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4. Timestamps: Key Segments

• 03:31–07:53: Introduction to 1440 Multiversity retreat & Scott Krinz’s journey
• 08:01–09:17: Tech insiders shunning screens for their kids—Waldorf School phenomenon
• 12:52–16:23: The Schlein family’s Tech Shabbat, the rise of digital sabbaths
• 16:23–19:51: Jaron Lanier explains addictive tech design & the bummer machine
• 21:14–22:52: The emotional challenge & necessity of unplugging; “self-defense”
• 22:52–24:25: Rabbi Mintz on historical & spiritual context for intentional pause
• 24:11–27:40: Tristan Harris’s insights—from “Time Well Spent” to “Human Downgrading”
• 29:35–31:23: The privilege and challenge of disconnecting
• 30:28–31:23: Restoring in-person connection, optimism for change in leadership tone

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5. Episode Summary & Takeaways

• The very people whose inventions made tech addictive and omnipresent are carving out deliberate time to disconnect—through luxury retreats, family rules, and even spiritual sabbaths.
• Their critique: the monetization machine of engagement exploits our vulnerabilities, focusing on negativity and constant distraction.
• While industry insiders try to reclaim their attention and humanity, not everyone can so easily “opt out.” The privilege inherent in tuning out is acknowledged and debated.
• Movements like Tech Shabbat and centers like 1440 Multiversity hold out hope for more mindful engagement with technology.
• Yet the gravitational pull of screens—even on the hosts themselves—remains strong, highlighting the depth of our dependence and the challenge of real change.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In:
This episode is a nuanced, behind-the-scenes exploration of tech detoxing at its source—among the engineers, founders, and critics who understand better than anyone the dangers of hyperconnected life. Through interviews with thought leaders, personal stories, and on-the-ground reporting, you’ll gain insight into why “tuning out” is both so difficult, and perhaps more urgent than ever in a world shaped by the very devices we cling to.

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Transcript

[Scott Krinz]

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[Scott Krinz]

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[Danny Fortson]

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[Danny Fortson]

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[Danny Fortson]

we got everything? Yeah, we got everything. Okay, we're ready. I'm looking forward to this. My wife and I have packed an overnight bag into the car along with our two young boys, and are headed south from Oakland. We've sped down Highway 101, passing Facebook's Menlo park campus, the Googleplex and Mountain View, and the Apple spaceship in Cupertino, and an unending chain of beige office parks. The highway is whittling down from eight lanes to four to two as we're leaving Silicon Valley behind and driving up a winding road onto the campus of an old Bible college nestled on 75 acres of walking trails and redwood trees. Open my window. Isn't that pretty? That tree is so pretty. Open it. Cole, you need to ask nicely, Please, please hush. Open the window. But we're not here to brush up on scripture. This place now has a different purpose, helping the tech elite tune out. It's called 1440 multiversity, an oasis full of babbling brooks, bearded gurus, and a menu of courses with promising, if confounding names like Building a Movement and the Bridge to Happiness. The campus is the manifestation of a movement that, perhaps not surprisingly, is taking root here at ground zero of the technology revolution. Its leaders are stepping away from their devices and seeking enlightenment. You may find that galling, but it is Also telling. After all, if the architects of the apps that have invaded our lives are that worried about what they're doing to them, what do the masters of our universe know that we don't? If they're insulating themselves, should we? I'm Danny Fordson, west coast correspondent for the Sunday Times, and this is Tales of Silicon Valley, episode seven, the Big Tune Out.

[Bluma Schlein]

Like, when I'm on technology, I'm always so distracted. I don't feel like I'm focused on anything really.

[Jaron Lanier]

We've inadvertently created a system that emphasizes negativity and empowers it. It differentially benefits the terrorists over the democracy activists. It differentially benefits the racists over the people trying to build a tolerant society. It differentially benefits abusers over the abused. And it does so universally by unplugging,

[Gina Pell]

we are unplugging from the slavery of us being min monetized against our will.

[Scott Krinz]

Okay. And we're going, yeah, well, I am. Scott Krinz and life before 1440 was buried in the tech world.

[Danny Fortson]

Scott Kriens was there at the beginning. He and a handful of colleagues set up a company called Juniper Networks in 1996. It made networking equipment just as the world needed a lot of it. It was the dawn of the Internet. Krinz, who ran juniper for 12 years and remains chairman of its board, did very, very well thanks to his large holding of Juniper stock. A typical Silicon Valley story. He wanted for nothing.

[Scott Krinz]

But then there was a moment that redirected the rest of my life, actually, and it was in 2004 when I lost my father. And I was 45 then. And up to that point, every once in a while, the question of what's really important would pop up. But it always got. It was easier to push it aside and ponder it because I couldn't come up with an answer.

[Danny Fortson]

It took him a while, but his answer was 1440. He and his wife bought the Bible College in 2013. They spent the next four years and millions of dollars creating a luxury retreat come self help campus, with a dash of California crunchiness and spirituality. I've seen a lot of crystals around. I'm actually drinking crystal infused water. So crystals. There's a lot of different crystals. Having these crystals can help balance your energy in different ways. It can balance your chakras.

[Sidney Mintz]

And so the properties of the blend

[Danny Fortson]

of crystals are infused in the water. By the time it opened in 2017, the promise of the Internet that Krynz had helped build had lost its sheen. And the darker side of social media was starting to reveal itself.

[Scott Krinz]

Mr. Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?

[Danny Fortson]

Um, uh, no. If you've messaged anybody this week, would you share with us the names of the people you've messaged? Senator? No, I would probably not choose to do that publicly here. I think that may be what this is all about. Your right to privacy, the limits of your right to privacy, and how much you give away in modern America in the name of, quote, connecting people around the world. Krinz's goal goes far beyond simply creating a cushy place to unplug at the doorstep of Silicon Valley. What he hopes is that 1440 will become its spiritual laboratory, a place where the elite can reorient themselves and hopefully dream up products that don't have the nasty side effect of undermining society.

[Scott Krinz]

Sometimes the best way to go faster is to slow down. And sometimes it makes more sense to sharpen the axe than just keep wailing away and trying to cut down a tree. We've had a whole lot of support and participation from a lot of the names you'd recognize in the valley, bringing groups here and sometimes doing their own work, sometimes work that we've participated in or we've taught. And there's a lot of momentum growing around that.

[Danny Fortson]

Has Mark Zuckerberg been here?

[Scott Krinz]

We've had a lot of very interesting guests.

[Danny Fortson]

Last year I wrote a story for the Sunday Times about the Waldorf schools. $30,000 a year. Private schools that are unique in the western world because they are screen free until at least eighth grade. Kids churn, butter, cook, play with simple wooden toys. Waldorf schools are wildly popular with techies, particularly for their anti tech ethos. This is not new. Steve Jobs sent his daughter Lisa to the Bay Area's first Waldorf school when it opened in the 1970s. Remember Al Alcorn, founder of Atari? When I interviewed him at his house in Portola Valley for episode one of this series, he told me a similar story from the 1980s. Keep in mind this is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. My daughter, when she was about 8 or 9, had a friend over sleepover, and in the morning I'm making pancakes for him. And the girl says, let's play your Nintendo game. And my daughter says, well, we don't have a Nintendo game and we don't have any video game. They're going, well, I can put an Atari game together.

[Scott Krinz]

I can get one of the vcs.

[Danny Fortson]

I can get that working.

[Scott Krinz]

That'd be okay. Great. My Wife says, no, not in this house.

[Danny Fortson]

I said, huh?

[Scott Krinz]

So I don't want the kids playing video.

[Danny Fortson]

I said, wait a second. It's okay to steal lunch money from 100 million kids around the world, but not our kids, right? A little hypocritical here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't care. That's really fun. It sticks in the craw a bit, doesn't it? The sense that there are two sets of rules, like tobacco executives who tell their kids not to smoke. The campus of 1440 is sprawling, beautifully landscaped. Rooms vary from $700 a night suites to dormitory style sleeping pods. There's a teaching kitchen next to a big organic garden. It's a very tranquil place. Nature is such an important part of healing, and there's so much wisdom that's also in these trees. And I'll go into that a bit. But right now what I thought we would do is we'll walk across here, we'll walk on the upper trail, and I'll take you guys down into our sort of outdoor cathedral, our redwood outdoor cathedral, and talk to you quite a bit. Last night I decided to take an evening soak in the infinity hot tub, which looks out onto a redwood grove. Afterwards, walking back to the room, I passed by the former chapel, which has been retrofitted. The back wall is now all glass, very brightly lit, and it's packed with people, maybe 30 or 40. They're lined up in rows, bobbing up and down in unison, arms fluttering wildly. A spiritual disco. This morning, as my wife and I are having coffee and I'm telling her about the encounter, half a dozen people walking nearby stop in their tracks. They arrange themselves to face the sun and stand, knees bent, arms at their sides, palms up, eyes closed. They stand there for a while. Yeah, the sun came out through the

[Scott Krinz]

rain, and it's this refreshing moment to

[Danny Fortson]

let the light in. We call it a Tai yang. It's this supreme Yang energy. That's Louis Regan, the 1440 instructor who led the group in their impromptu moment of sun worship. This really warm, nurturing energy that when you have the moment, especially if it's been a little while since you've been from the sun. To allow the sun to replenish your being, especially the eyes, and says to re energize your spirit. Wow. Yeah. That particular weekend had the first session of a new course called Tech Shabbat. It was about quite literally getting rid of your phone, in this case, for 25 hours in the mold of the Jewish day of rest. Shabbat sprinklings of this concept had already cropped up over the past year. Google and Apple last year rolled out screen time apps that allow people to monitor their device use. Facebook rejiggered its algorithm to sift out inflammatory posts and propaganda, although, it must be said, with limited success. Silicon Valley knows there is a problem, but waiting for the big beasts of tech to solve it for us seems, well, unrealistic. There's simply too much money at stake. The inertia of the industry feels unstoppable. The idea of taking a day out every week was intriguing and, I gotta say, delightfully analog. So I've headed over to one of the outbuildings at 1440, where the tech Free course is just wrapping up. The room is dimly lit. In the middle of the floor is a makeshift altar, and arranged around it, a bunch of smartphones, each of them wrapped in a little black bag, dormant, but soon to be reawoken. The course is the brainchild of the Tiffany Schlein, one of the founders of the Webby Awards way back in 1998. These days, she runs a studio that makes films about science and technology.

[Bluma Schlein]

So I'm in it. I'm not like someone that's like, technology is bad, because I think technology can be everything.

[Danny Fortson]

But for the past 10 years, Schlein, her husband Ken, and their two daughters, Bluma and Odessa, have gone screen free for one day a week. She thinks the practice, which started out as an oddity, especially in her circles, is something we should all do for our own sake.

[Bluma Schlein]

I think we have a lot more agency than we act like we do. I think we feel like we're slaves to these machines and they are created to play to every one of our animal instincts and impulses. And I think we need to remember that we can also turn it off. And really, these tech Shabbats that my family and I have been doing for almost a decade is the best thing I've ever done individually or as a parent or as a person. Just feels so much more grounded. And I race towards these days off. I feel like we've created a society that has no room for reflection. And every culture, starting with the Jews, with Shabbat, but then every culture, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, all this time off, and they used to have a complete day off. And now we're in a 247 culture where there's absolutely no time off, there's no time to take a beat, there's no time for reflection. And I think we're living in a

[Danny Fortson]

society that's the result of that since we sat down. Facebook picked up 10 million new users every day. It now has 2.7 billion people, the largest empire in human history. It's hard to wrap your mind around such huge numbers, but here's one to give you some perspective. There are 2.1 billion Christians in the world today. So, yeah, right now, Mark Zuckerberg has more followers than Jesus. Gina Pell drove up to 1440 to go phoneless as well.

[Gina Pell]

I'm a tech entrepreneur. I've been in tech for 20 years, so that's why I'm here.

[Danny Fortson]

She's founded three companies. The industry has afforded her a good life, and she is deeply ensconced.

[Gina Pell]

My husband also, he writes something called Next Draft, and he calls himself the managing editor of the Internet. He is one of the most addicted people I see on the Internet. He says that he opens 150 tabs every morning. He writes from 9 to 1, and he spits out a newsletter every day, recapping the top 10 stories of the Web every day. My kids have started to My daughter was into Musical Ly. My son was into Fortnite.

[Danny Fortson]

She broke the news over dinner that they too would be going dark once a week.

[Gina Pell]

And so I said, okay, you guys, there's this really amazing thing called Tech Shabbat, and we're going to start observing it. Maybe I shouldn't have put it that way. We're going to start doing this. Maybe I should have taken a vote first. And my son jumped up from the table screaming, saying, no way, I'm not doing that. And then my daughter was furious and they both burst out in tears and ran upstairs screaming. And my husband looks at me and goes, well, that went well.

[Danny Fortson]

Her kids have come around slowly. But as you, I, or anyone else who has a smartphone can attest, the idea of simply going without for a day is pretty hard to fathom. The question is why? Why did her kids lose their minds? Why did these grown adults feel the need to put their phones in little bags stored at a safe distance as if they were radioactive? Why are they so addictive? I tracked down a couple people to help me answer that question. Jaron Lanier is a pioneer of virtual reality and the rare insider who's not afraid to criticize the tech industry. He also has the longest dreadlocks that I have ever seen in person. I first came across him last year. He lives in a house set back from the road, high in the Berkeley hills. He just written a book, 10 Reasons to Delete youe Social Media Accounts. Right now he answered the door in his bare feet. So how do I pronounce your name? Is it Jaron?

[Jaron Lanier]

I have not really ever come to preferred pronunciation, and I like hearing it vary around the world.

[Danny Fortson]

Over glasses of ice water at his kitchen table, he laid out the argument. The algorithms that underlie our favorite apps, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, are all built to do one thing, increase engagement. This is tech speak for time. And the most direct route to your time is to serve up content that stirs negative emotions. If what you see makes you sad or angry or anxious, you're more likely to dwell on it, to go deeper down the rabbit hole to respond, to go searching for support. It's a truth that behavioral therapists have known for decades. Code supercharges those mechanisms. The result, Lanier says, is that once we are on, we can't help ourselves. He's even coined a term for the industry that's been built on this negative feedback loop. He calls it the bummer machine.

[Jaron Lanier]

The bummer machine is just a way of stating what I believe we've created, which is the use of continuously connected devices that we keep around ourselves, including smartphones and smart smart speakers that are used to gather a great deal of data about us, which is then fed through algorithms that compare us to other people. And on the basis of observing, a great many of us, calculate a stream of stimuli that are sent to us that are calculated to modify us. The most typical rewards and punishment that are used to modify behavior are the generation of social feelings. So either positive social feelings. Oh, I was retweeted, somebody likes me, somebody's following me, all that sort of thing, which can have a very addictive quality. Within the industry, those are known as dopamine hits. That's a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward and behavior modification. And then the punishments are the feelings of social anxiety, ostracization, the feeling of potential inadequacy, the fear of being bullied and so forth, or actually being bullied, which is quite common.

[Danny Fortson]

It's a powerful machine. Two of the biggest companies in the world, Facebook, valued at nearly $600 billion, and Google parent Alphabet at nearly 900 billion, have been built on the back of that mechanism. And against those Goliaths stands Bluma.

[Bluma Schlein]

I'm Bluma and I'm nine years old.

[Danny Fortson]

And you have very cool pink hair. Thank you. Bluma is the daughter of Tiffany Schlein, the woman hoping to bring tech Shabbat to the world. While her mother and I talked about the perilous State of the Internet. She sat on the floor squirming, as kids do when adults are blathering on. She spent her whole life taking one day off tech. Every week. I asked her how she felt. When she gets back on, it's very different.

[Bluma Schlein]

Like when I'm on technology, I'm always so distracted. I don't feel like I'm focused on anything really, because. But when I'm on tech cheap out, I focus on everything and I get to spend time with my family. That's really fun.

[Danny Fortson]

And do any of your friends do this?

[Bluma Schlein]

No.

[Danny Fortson]

Do you tell them that you do this? And what do they say?

[Bluma Schlein]

Oh, yeah, they know that I do it, but they just say like, okay,

[Danny Fortson]

it's a family affair. Bluma's dad, Ken Goldberg, who runs his own robotics startup, is also a convert.

[Ken Goldberg]

I was a little hesitant, I will admit. I have to say. Appreciate is this idea that you can get through this day. I have so many friends who are like, they're happy to jump out of airplanes, they want to go to Machu Picchu. They'll do all kinds of adventures. But I asked them to do this and they're like, oh, no, I'm not. I really can't do that. It's a little bit asking a little too much. And I get that. It's very interesting. People have a real fear around it. I know it sounds a little bit strange. I think the whole idea of Shabbat, which is also has a Jewish overtone. But interestingly for me, we were saying that I feel like it's a form of self defense, that it just allows me to give a little bit of room to myself.

[Danny Fortson]

Listen to the language he uses. Fear, self defense. Goldberg may be an extreme case, or perhaps he's just more aware of the effect that his device has on him, given that he's so regularly goes without. But it does make you think maybe a day of rest isn't such a bad idea.

[Sidney Mintz]

This is the first time where we've made it mandatory for people to take out their devices, turn them off, put them all in one place, and not return to them until 24 hours later.

[Danny Fortson]

Where are the screens?

[Sidney Mintz]

We created an altar and we turned them off. What we're doing is we're having full faith that when we turn them on, things are going to be fine.

[Danny Fortson]

Sidney Mintz is a rabbi at the El Emanuel Temple in San Francisco, which is attended by many of the industry's leaders. She sees this as a vital step not only for our individual spiritual well being, but for humanity and she views the struggle in historical terms.

[Sidney Mintz]

There's been technologies that have been challenging to Shabbat for the last 4,000 years. This is just the next iteration. This is the most powerful challenge to Shabbat because it's so pervasive and it's so invasive. It's something that in many ways starts earlier than anything else because children can avail themselves of technology at such an early age and it pulls them out of themselves and pulls them out of the ability to be engaged and work face to face with one another. So that's why I see it being such a challenge. But I also think that Shabbat can be what saves our civilization. And I'm not anti tech at all. I think technology is very important for us. But in order for us to retain our humanity and our essence, we have to cease from technology for a period of time. I see that this ancient wisdom is something that it's not just for Jews anymore, really. It's something that our entire society really should be a part of and can avail themselves of if just to keep our sanity.

[Danny Fortson]

Schlein has written a book called 246 the Power of Unplugging One Day a Week. And maybe it will catch on. But if there is one person who has made a dent in how we think about tech and how Silicon Valley acts, it is Tristan Harris. He's a former design ethicist at Google and the founder of the center for humane technology.

[Tristan Harris]

As E.O. wilson said, the problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.

[Danny Fortson]

The center that he runs is small but influential. Harris coined the term time well spent, which was a call to arms. He started about three years ago. He banged the drum to little effect until last May, when suddenly Apple, Facebook and Google all rolled out features to track and minimize screen time. It was a small victory, but there is much more to be done. He argues the bummer machine is getting stronger every day. Over a decade ago, he got a peek behind the curtain. He was a student at Stanford, where he took courses in something called the Persuasive Technology Lab that taught engineering students

[Tristan Harris]

essentially about the principles of persuasion. Social psychology. You know what happens in Las Vegas, Clicker training for dogs. Like the entire full stack understanding of persuasion.

[Danny Fortson]

One of his classmates was Mike Krieger, the co founder of Instagram.

[Tristan Harris]

We weren't learning persuasive technology to manipulate people. We were learning how could you apply this to help people live happier, fuller lives? Go to the gym, floss, fulfill their own goals. But of course, what happened is that this whole discipline got co opted into what would be really good at hijacking people's psychology to get them looking at things on screens. This phrase that we coined, the race to the bottom of the brainstem, really accurately describes what happens because at the beginning it's like, okay, how do I put red trigger colors on the app? How do I make an Infinite scroll, remove the stopping cue so your mind doesn't know how to wake up and your mind never catches up to your intentions and so you just sit there scrolling forever. My co founder, Aza Raskin, invented Infinite Scroll. He estimates it wastes 200 million hours a day. I think it's a lot.

[Danny Fortson]

I can attest I find myself always reaching for my phone. But if you stopped and asked me in the moment why I was doing it, I couldn't give you a straight answer. I don't need to see if someone liked my tweet. I don't need to know who has posted something inflammatory about, say, immigration. But, but the compulsion is real and constant. Way back in the day, Harris didn't know that this is where it would all lead. In fact, he started his own company which was acquired by Google. It was there inside the mothership that he saw how this machine worked.

[Tristan Harris]

People talked about how do we give people peace of mind, et cetera, but the level of granularity, surgical precision about how to accomplish that, about what are we really doing to people and how would we correct for those stresses and those harms and, and it wasn't happening. I realized that the whole industry was missing this kind of conscience. And you know when people say, no, Tristan's the moral conscience of Silicon Valley. I don't want to be the moral conscience of Silicon Valley. I want Silicon Valley to have a conscience that's almost like the missing brain organ. That's just the self reflective brain organ that says how do we align what we're doing with the fabric of society rather than gobble it up and spit out some dysfunctional version of society.

[Danny Fortson]

These days, he frames the debate much more urgently. Technology and social media in particular are an existential threat, like climate change. And he's coined a new term for it, human downgrading.

[Tristan Harris]

It's the social climate change of culture because it's a connected system. You want to shorten attention spans, reduce complexity and nuance, to go to simpler sounding things. Simpler sounding things means that outrage and like really sensational things works really well. That means that polarization happens because when you say short, hard to interpret, simple, outrageous things, people polarize to both sides of the issue. People trust each other less. So the entire thing is self reinforcing towards craziness. It's almost like with climate change. Yes, we've got all this CO2, this polarization spew that's just like been, we've been drinking it up in the air, except you can snap your fingers and realize this was all made up. I mean, yes, some people like these conspiracy theories, but the amplification rate was entirely driven by, in this case, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and some other ones by the technology. We're at this really important moment where if we don't realize that we've all been collectively manipulated into this downgraded public sphere, this downgraded epistemology of what we know and believe, we have to sort of recognize first that we've kind of all been under this grand illusion. And that should be calming because you realize we're not actually all as crazy as we think we are. We've just been led down this crazy path.

[Danny Fortson]

Which brings us back to the pine scented paradise of 1440. Here with us are a big group from Google who have taken over one section of the campus. Perhaps they're just doing what Harris suggested, devising a way to remake their empire. Or maybe they're just here for the infinity hot tub. The reality is that most people have neither the time or energy to even make the calculation that Schlein and her family have to tot up what we're losing versus what we gain from these little black mirrors packed with free services.

[Ken Goldberg]

It is a real privilege to be able to do this, that just even being here at 1440, we're very, very lucky. I mean, there are people who have to work multiple jobs whose boss will say, get this done on Saturday. And we can't prescribe that everyone should do it. And I think that for many people it's, you know, that they just don't want to draw these lines. And I think that's, you know, probably going to persist for the majority.

[Gina Pell]

Gina Pell this weekend has been so beautiful. We've been just talking and connecting and looking at each other and this has been all day and it's going to end in an hour. And it's funny because a lot of people here have said like, oh my gosh, I'm going to feel that rush when I get back on my device. And I actually feel the opposite. I feel like it's like punishment. I actually feel that technology is a blessing and a curse to me.

[Danny Fortson]

So perhaps we should be encouraged that the authors of Our Chaos have places like 1440 to go to take a step back and work on ways to

[Scott Krinz]

reverse the damage to the degree we can affect leaders. It's the greatest upstream leverage that I know because the leader of the organization is the one that sets the tone.

[Danny Fortson]

Founder of 1440, Scott Krinz.

[Scott Krinz]

Again, to the degree they show up in a way that hopefully is influenced positively by some of the beliefs that we have here, then we've carried that into that whole organization. And I have huge respect for being in the right place at the right time. Anybody that takes more credit than that is taking more credit than they should, in my view.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah.

[Scott Krinz]

And I hope 1440 and the multiversity is going to be another case of that. This is at a time when some pause and some reflection and some compassion can actually go a long ways.

[Danny Fortson]

I'm not banking on Silicon Valley saving me from for myself. And I'll confess, my wife and I discussed the idea of incorporating a screen free day into our lives. All the way home, we both agreed it was a really good idea and then just didn't do it. But my boys are growing up. One is nearly three, the other is nine months old. And simply by watching us, they have already learned that the phone is the center of life. They gravitate toward it, clumsily swiping the screen without fully understanding what they're doing. Just like their parents, we have ever so gently tugged them in to the bummer machine. I don't want to go. What are you trying to say? Underground sandbox? Not tonight. Next week on Tales of Silicon Valley, our final episode, we go behind the curtain of the Internet itself to explore a world where millions of anonymous hourly workers keep the Web safe for the rest of us, often to the detriment of their own well being. Fifteen years ago, there was no one doing anything like this. And now on various social media platforms, whether it's Facebook or Instagram, it's essential.

[Tristan Harris]

You know, it's sort of this horrific

[Danny Fortson]

dystopian vision of people sitting in rooms with monitors constantly flashing truly awful imagery at them. Tales of Silicon Valley was written and narrated by me, Danny Fortson, with production by Chica Ayers at Rethink Audio. Matt hall is the executive producer for Wireless Studios. It was a Wireless Studios production for Times, Newspapers. And one more thing. If you're enjoying this series, head over to my other podcast, Danny in the Valley, where you can hear interviews with everyone from Bill Gates and Marc Andreessen to the Anonymous startup founder working on what they hope will be the next big thing. That's Danny in the Valley. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jameela Jamil]

This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by ServiceNow.

[Danny Fortson]

There's a lot of excitement around AI right now, but the problem is what happens after the demo when you have

[Jameela Jamil]

to plug that technology into a real company.

[Danny Fortson]

Different clouds, different data, different systems that were never designed to talk to each other.

[Jameela Jamil]

ServiceNow's platform is designed to help people by connecting these pieces, enabling organizations to coordinate work across departments, tools, and, increasingly, AI agents.

[Danny Fortson]

In fact, the company says more than 80 billion workflows run on its platform

[Jameela Jamil]

every year, which gives you a sense of the scale of operations it's designed to handle.

[Danny Fortson]

Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for [e-mail].

[Scott Krinz]

Acast powers the World's best Podcasts here's the show that we recommend.

[Danny Fortson]

Do you like being educated on things that entertain but don't matter? Well, then you need to be listening to the Podcast with Knox and Jamie. Every Wednesday we put together an episode dedicated to delightful idiocy to give your brain a break from all the serious and important stuff. Whether we're deep diving a classic movie, dissecting the true meanings behind the newest slang, or dunking on our own listeners for their bad takes or cringy stories, we always approach our topics with humor and just a little bit of side eye. And we end every episode with recommendations on all the best new movies, books, TV shows, or music. To find out more, just search up the Podcast with Knox and Jamie.

[Tristan Harris]

Wherever you listen to podcasts and prepare

[Danny Fortson]

to make Wednesday your new favorite day

[Scott Krinz]

of the week, Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.