The World Beyond Your Head
On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
by Matthew B. Crawford, Matthew Crawford · first published 2014
75% recommend25% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A philosophical look at attention and distraction, arguing that skilled hands-on practice and engagement with the real world help us become individuals. Suits readers concerned with focus, tech design, and craft.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"A groundbreaking new book from the bestselling author of Shop Class as Soulcraft In his bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we re
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…think it's a real problem these days, we are bombarded with things competing to make us into short-attention-spanned dopamine addicts and it screws up our lives badly. The Matthew Crawford books "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction" and "Shopcraft as Soulcraft" are super interesting reads on this topic. I'm biased, being a musician, but my experience and many of my colleagues…
on “Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer” ↗…attention to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22201771 I've become somewhat "obsessed" with this topic recently and would love to know if others know of any resources I can check out. I read "The World Beyond Your Head" by Matthew Crawford recently--he spells out this phenomenon quite well. EDIT: Jose Ortega's full name is Jose Ortega y Gasset--I forgot to add the last part.
on “Expert programmers have fine-tuned cortical representations of source code” ↗…building the web, complicit in a whole bunch of this madness. I highly recommend looking into this more, as, in my opinion, we're becoming victims of our medium in the most McLuhan-esque sense. [1] The World Beyond Your Head - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-World-Beyond-Your-Head/dp/037429...
on “If the internet is addictive, why we don't regulate it?” ↗Matthew B. Crawford's "Shop Class for Soulcraft" and "The World Beyond Your Head" are excellent explorations of how manual work can change your outlook on the world. I've recently become obsessed with woodworking videos on YouTube. I think watching Paul Sellers spend two hours making…
on “An Honest Living” ↗This makes me think strongly of Matthew B. Crawford's books ("The World Beyond Your Head", "Shop Class as Soulcraft"). He focuses directly on difficult techniques like this, things that require both intellectual focus and physical technique to master - craftsmanship. He believes that this…
on “Italy’s rarest pasta” ↗For anyone interested in diving deeper into this topic, I highly recommend the book "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction" by Matthew Crawford. Of all the books I've read this year, this one has stuck with me the most--it's a fascinating study on the attention environment…
on “Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will” ↗…could edit my comment, but it looks like HN takes away the ability after some time. What I wanted to do was to recommend everybody read two books: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (cheesy title, I know) and "The World Beyond Your Head." Both books are my Matthew Crawford, a "knowledge worker" turned mechanic / author in Virginia. He writes wonderfully about this whole idea of what to attend to, what to pay attention to, and how those…
on “How we pay attention changes the shape of our brains” ↗The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford, 2015. Why and how to find focus in this age of distraction. Will give you a real appreciation for woodworking, etc.
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗The world beyond your head is fantastic. http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Beyond-Your-Head/dp/03742929...
on “Ask HN: Book Recommendations?” ↗I highly recommend reading Matthew Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head. He spends a chapter examining how the casino industry games gamblers and addicts, and the sad effects that has on people.
A year or so ago I read "The World Beyond Your Head"[0] which also tackles the questions "Where do we direct our attention and why?" Ever since then I've become acutely aware of where I choose to focus my concentration and why. It's exceedingly difficult…
on “Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It” ↗…books in particular have me thinking in this direction... Drift into Failure, by Sidney Dekker, which is about understanding failure in highly complex systems (aircraft, nuclear reactors, etc), and The World Beyond Your Head, by Matthew B. Crawford, which is really a philosophy book, but has substantial criticism of Enlightenment thinking (which includes reductionism, from Descartes/Newton, the basis of the scientific method).…
on “How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?” ↗Two standouts: The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, by Matthew B. Crawford. This is Crawford's second book, and I recommend his first, Shop Class as Soulcraft, even more highly. This is modern philosophy,…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗I'm a bit slammed, but the book The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford summarises a lot. Not necessarily can't have consciousness, but the research he cites argues that we are more than just a brain.
on “Billions’ worth of high-tech research seeking to make death optional” ↗I would highly recommend reading Matthew Crawford's The World Outside Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. (https://www.bookdepository.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Matthe...)
on “Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention” ↗