Why I’m Getting Off Twitter – Reading from B.F. Skinner’s “Beyond The Box”
Yesterday I was feeling frustrated with the digital world and picked up a book that had just come in the mail: Alexandra Rutherford’s “Beyond the Box: B.F. Skinner’s Technology of Behavior from Laboratory to Life, 1950s-1970s.” As I got to the chapter on token economies at Anna State Mental Hospital in Illinois, it all became crystal clear – the dopamine hits of social media are the tokens. They use them to program us.
So, I decided to back-off my social media footprint even further and rework what I imagine “success” to be. I keep telling myself it’s not a numbers game; it’s an intention game. My friend Cliff taught me that; he’s a smart guy, check out his channel. So now I have to have the gumption to put that belief into practice, even though I’ll admit it’s hard letting go of the idea that you have some big audience out there somewhere. None of it it is real, though, just a reflection. READ MORE
