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Learning path

Living With Technology

Attention, distraction, artificial intelligence, work and exploration, examined with evidence.

About this path

Technology shapes what we notice, how we work and what we imagine for the future. Debates about it often swing between alarm and hype, and the research behind them is frequently correlational or still young.

This path looks at five areas: attention, distraction, machine intelligence, skills for changing work and the push to explore space. Each lesson shows what studies measured, what they did not, and offers a question to try against your own habits.

Estimated time: about 4 hours, at your own pace.

By the end you can

  • Explain what the idea of an attention economy claims and where it comes from
  • Read an 'AI beats humans' headline with specific questions in mind
  • Describe why researchers study tasks within jobs rather than whole jobs

Lessons

Tick a lesson when you finish it. Progress is saved in this browser only.

  1. The Attention Economy

    Attention is limited, and many products compete for it. This lesson traces the idea to Herbert Simon in 1971, explains what screen-switching measurements capture, and clarifies why most screen-time findings are correlational, ending with the suggestion to treat your own habits as small personal experiments.

    Reflect: Which app or notification most often pulls you away, and what are you giving up when it does?

  2. Why We Drift

    Distraction is less a personal flaw than a mismatch between a flexible attention system and a world of interruptions. The lesson describes a classic study of the stress cost of interruptions, cautions against over-reading research on heavy multitaskers, and offers a modest experiment for protecting a block of focus.

    Reflect: When was your last uninterrupted hour, and what made it possible?

  3. Intelligence, Human and Machine

    Here the question is what machines do and do not understand. Systems can pass expert tests yet stumble on everyday tasks, and a philosophy puzzle called the Chinese Room asks whether symbol handling amounts to understanding. The lesson shows how to read headlines critically.

    Reflect: What question would you ask before believing a headline that says AI outperforms people?

  4. Skills in Changing Work

    Studies from 2025 and 2026 by organisations such as the WEF and the ILO and by academic teams examine how AI touches work. This lesson explains why they analyse tasks inside jobs, what each measured, which skills the evidence tends to highlight, and where the limits lie.

    Reflect: Which tasks in your own work could be shared with software, and which depend on people?

  5. Reaching Beyond Earth

    Technology also extends human reach. The lesson reviews overlapping reasons given for space exploration, what the Outer Space Treaty says and leaves open, where the Artemis programme stood in October 2026, and the strongest objections to crewed flight. It treats the motives as overlapping rather than competing, so you can weigh them yourself.

    Reflect: Which reason for exploring space persuades you most, and which objection gives you pause?

Put it into practice

A Three-Day Attention Experiment

About 20 minutes

  1. Pick one device habit to observe, such as checking your phone on waking.
  2. For three days, note each time you do it and what you were doing just before.
  3. On day four, change one condition, such as moving the phone to another room for an hour.
  4. Compare how the hour felt with an ordinary hour, noting that three days cannot prove cause.
  5. Decide whether to keep, adjust or drop the change, and write one sentence on why.

This is a personal observation exercise, not research; it shows patterns for you only.

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