Sir, – Johann Hari's article in last Saturday's paper – "How tech is stealing our ability to focus" (Books, January 8th) – was very timely.
His description of IT engineers using sophisticated techniques to manipulate and exploit people – “The cleverest engineers in the world spend all day figuring out how to get you to switch tasks to their site” – is something that we intuitively suspected, but it is startling to see it plainly stated.
Although his article is focussed on the world of social media, his message applies equally to ordinary television programming.
To spend a couple of hours watching television nowadays is a similar experience to trying to walk along a street while being persistently beset and badgered by hordes of hawkers and beggars – buy this, buy that, help the poor donkeys, get yourself cremated.
The targets of different advertisements can be clearly identified from their tone and the employed motifs, and the viewer is presented with the dismal spectacle of human weakness and folly being cynically targeted and exploited. Even the so-called “non-commercial” stations run persistent advertisements for their own programming. There is no escape. – Yours, etc,
TERRY MOYLAN,
Dublin 12.