Evgeny Morozov writes:

We must subject social media to the kind of scrutiny that has been applied to the design of gambling machines in Las Vegas casinos. As Natasha Dow Schüll shows in her excellent book Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, while casino operators want us to think that addiction is the result of our moral failings or some biological imbalance, they themselves are to blame for designing gambling machines in a way that feeds addiction. With social media—much like with gambling machines or fast food—our addiction is manufactured, not natural.

In other words, why we disconnect matters: We can continue in today’s mode of treating disconnection as a way to recharge and regain productivity, or we can view it as a way to sabotage the addiction tactics of the acceleration-distraction complex that is Silicon Valley.

Full Story: The Mindfulness Racket: The evangelists of unplugging might just have another agenda

The idea of disconnecting as subversive activity reminds me of Hakim Bey’s Immediatism.

See also:

Gentrification protesters crash Google talk on corporate mindfulness

For Silicon Valley, Meditation Is About Getting Ahead, Not Inner Peace

Contemplative Computing: Lessons From Monks About Designing The Technologies Of The Future