Do you think our attention is for sale? Is the technology we carry in our pockets distracting us from pursuing our life goals? Have we woken up to the scale of the attention-capturing and persuasive powers being held by a small number of big tech companies? In the latest RSA Short, James Williams warns of the dangers that digital distraction poses to us individually and collectively. If we’re serious about protecting human agency and democracy, he argues, it’s time we started defending our freedom of attention.
Speaker: James Williams Director: Olga Makarchuk Animation: Olga Makarchuk, Kim Alexander Colouring Assistance: Anna Makarchuk Sound: Nico Antwerp Video Producer: Ross Henbest Joint Head of Public Events Programme: Mairi Ryan Intro and outro animation: Cabeza Patata
Tell us a bit about yourself & your filmmaking background.
The RSA Shorts is a popular and well established video series combining beautifully crafted illustration and animation with voices from the RSA’s public events programme.
In the early days of YouTube, we began to merge a number of animation techniques and illustration styles with critical ideas and voices to deliver a powerful “mental espresso”, designed to awaken the curiosity in all of us.
Over the years, The RSA Shorts series has achieved global viral success, garnering many millions of online views and several prestigious film festival awards, including most recently the 2020 Webby Award – widely recognized as ‘the Internet’s Highest Honour’ – in the Video Animation Series category.
Your film visualises a talk given by James Williams. How did it come about that you made his talk into a film?
The animation features an extract from a talk given as part of the RSA public events programme by James Williams, author of Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.
Mairi Ryan, Joint Head of Public Events at The RSA was really the driving force behind this commission. Having worked with James on delivering a public event, Mairi created a thought-provoking audio-excerpt which we then worked with Olga Makarchuk on in order to develop the idea.
What interested you in the topic of social media distraction and how does this topic resonate with you personally?
There can’t be many people who haven’t been concerned about the length of time they are spending on digital devices and the impact it might be having on their lives. In this film, Williams explores the impact that digital distraction has on both individuals and society at large.
He describes how digital technologies have been engineered to privilege our impulses over our intentions, resulting in a gradual erosion of human willpower and agency. Meanwhile, massive attention-capturing and persuasive powers are now held in the hands of a small number of dominant tech companies, posing a growing threat to democracy worldwide. All this, he argues, makes the task of reasserting and defending our freedom of attention, the defining moral and political challenge of our time.
Tell us about your animation process and where we can watch more of your work.
When we invite big thinkers to speak at the RSA in London, we take a high-quality audio recording of their talk so that, later, we can combine their words with moving image to make the ideas engaging and accessible to new audiences worldwide. We allow a pool of skilled animators and illustrators free rein to interpret and communicate the content in their unique style – but always with a focus on clarity, creativity and visual impact. It's a back and forth process during development that involves many cups of coffee!
Past animations have used various techniques including stop-motion animation, illustrative animation, 2D, 3D, character animation etc. We are forever searching for new creative talent and different ways to tell stories. Who knows, maybe we'll move into 360 Animation soon.
Explore more of The RSA Shorts on our YouTube channel; you can also stay up-to-date with everything we're up to at thersa.org
Any film recommendations that we should check out?
As far as recommendations go, within our team we've been talking about the new film 'The Social Dilemma' (2020) Directed by Jeff Orlowski on Netflix; which is exploring similar issues and expanding the discourse. We're currently working on two more shorts to be released soon, keep your eyes peeled.
Interested in getting your work selected as Short of the Week?