Sunny Banana
YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@sanibonani-y2g?si=09LymOLYjP7sE3cY
I am a school chaplain and the content is intended to encourage curiosity about Faith and it's impact on day to day life
The Sunny Banana, is a play upon the Zulu greeting, Sanibonani, meaning I see you.
As tech wrenches us from real life, we are not seeing each other. The Greek word 'idea' means to see. It is as if we have lost the idea of what it means to be human; social, communal, relational. The same word, to see, in Old English is 'seon' which has connotations of understanding.
Let's start seeing each other again, listening, respecting, and understanding each other and ourselves. After all, we are people through other people.
Sunny Banana
Nate Morgan-Locke | Behold: The Battle for Your Mind in the Digital Age
What happens when the most valuable thing you own isn't your smartphone—but your attention itself?
In this eye-opening talk, filmmaker and "reformed mythologist" Nate Morgan-Lock pulls back the curtain on the attention economy that's reshaping how we experience the world. With humor and insight, he reveals how social media platforms have engineered their interfaces to keep us scrolling endlessly, exploiting our psychological "portion bias" and leaving us perpetually unsatisfied.
Morgan-Lock takes us on a fascinating journey through recent technological history, noting that today's teenagers have never known a world without smartphones. He traces how the launch of TikTok in 2016 revolutionized content consumption, shifting from landscape to vertical video formats and creating an infinite scroll that ensures we never reach the bottom of our feeds. This isn't accidental—it's by design.
"Your eyeballs and your eardrums are for sale," Morgan-Lock explains, showing how tech companies profit from keeping our attention captive. While we often focus on problematic content creators, the real issue may be the format itself—a system designed to create anxiety about what we might miss if we disconnect.
The talk culminates with a thoughtful exploration of what it means to "behold" something truly meaningful in an age of distraction. Morgan-Lock suggests that what we choose to give our attention to ultimately shapes who we become: "We become what we behold."
Whether you're struggling with your own screen time or trying to understand the digital landscape your children are navigating, this talk offers valuable insights into reclaiming our agency in the attention economy. Listen now to discover how to break free from the scroll and redirect your attention to what truly matters.
Good morning First years. May I have your attention please, attention, attention. Well, the time has come and I'm quite excited, so thank you for coming today. I think it's the first of its kind or kind of a talk here at Beads. Our speaker today his name is Nate Morgan-Lock, and Nate Morgan-Lock, he's a filmmaker, he's a published author and the coolest thing I like about Nate is he's called a reformed mythologist, loves to tell stories, but today he's here to talk to you about attention.
Speaker 1:Now at Beads we care about four things. I'm not going to tell you the values, you know the values already, but the four things as a chaplain I care about. For. To tell you the values, you know the values already, but the four things as a chaplain I care about for you is your spiritual development, your moral development and social and cultural development. And today the talk is going to sort of address those areas in your life and how attention and the warning of distractions in life can maybe limit who we are as people and maybe it's holding us back.
Speaker 1:I just want to share a little blurb about three books that I've been reading. John O'Donohue wrote the book Anamkara and he says when he warns us that we are constantly exposed to superficial images through social media. It devalues our inner will. Maggie Ross, another writer, wrote a book called Silence, and she says that our lack of experience with silence and attention makes us open to manipulation. And lastly, an article I read by the Society of Buddhist and Christian Studies emphasizes that, guys, giving of our attention to others is an act of profound love. How beautiful is that. Giving our attention to others is an act of profound love. Well, that's enough from me, and I will now. Let's give Nate Morgan-Lock a beads welcome. Thank you, nate.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning. Yes, my name is Nathan James Hamden, morgan-locke or Nate, if that's easy for you to remember. And, as your chaplain has just said, I call myself a reformed mythologist. How exciting is that? What even does that mean? Basically, it means I'm a Christian, reformed refers to the Christian tradition I'm from, and mythologist. What does that mean? Well, mythos means story and logos means the study of the study of story. I'm a Christian who studies stories.
Speaker 2:So you do other stuff which is like ology, right, you do biology, maybe. Maybe you're into geology, the study of rocks, maybe you're into I don't know what other ologies can you think of? Theology, the study of God? Well, I'm into mythology, the study of stories. So that's my thing.
Speaker 2:And if you came to our house, we live in fact, we live right next door to the prep school. So if you want to come meet us there on the seafront, that's where I'll be based. And if you came to our house on any day of the week, my kids are home educated, so they will be in, but if it's not school time, if you went into our house, what would you find? You would find everyone in the house enjoying a story at some level. So if you walked into the living room you'd find on the sofa would be a cat my wife, she's called Cat and she would be listening to an audio book, like not really reading. Yeah, anyone like audio books Not really reading, is it? But you're listening to an audio book and she would have a massive cup of tea. The audio books you'd be listening to would be Agatha Christie, cozy crime detectives, people like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, some very cozy little detective who's solving murders. My wife likes to listen to people talking about murders. That's slightly intimidating. Anyway, she's lost in that world and she loves it when all the murdering's been done and then the detective does their detective work and they solve all the problems and they line everyone up.
Speaker 2:Sometimes there's TV shows like this, like Death in Paradise. Does anyone ever watch that? Some of your parents might enjoy it. Right, death in Paradise. They get everyone together in a room at the end and then then they walk around and they go oh, everyone thought it was this guy but actually it was him, because I noticed he was left-handed when he was playing pool and it was like, wow, you're such a good detector, you're such a good detective, you knew the answers, you knew what was going on. My wife loves to sit in those stories.
Speaker 2:Go into another room, go find my son. You will find him playing a video game. Any video game fans, anyone play any video games. I'm not talking about your, you know your easy entry video games like your FIFAs. No, he's going to be playing one of those open world video games where you walk around with a sword and a bow and arrow and have to find jewelry right, zelda, breath of the Wild, tears of a Kingdom. He's off, he's doing his adventuring. He's in that story and if he moves his thumbs all like this, then the pixels move on the screen and he's totally immersed in that story. And I love the fact that he loves those stories and he's totally immersed in that story and I love the fact that he loves those stories. And then, if you went into my daughter's room, you would find her giving a full performance of the Eastbourne leg of the era's tour.
Speaker 2:She's a Swifty, ladies and gentlemen. Are you a Swifty? Yeah, you look like a Swifty. I'm a Swifty, massive Swifty. What does Taylor Swift do? She sings songs about love. Oh, I love him, but he loves her. Oh, it's a love story. Oh, it's complicated. And so there's a story that she's engaging in which is to do with Taylor Swift, for getting in and out of cars with boys that she likes, Okay. But now she's with Travis Kelsey, plays for the Kansas City Chiefs and that's going to go really well and we're really pleased. But we don't want them to win the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:Because what would I be doing? Wife's listening to a detective audio book, son's playing a fantasy adventure video game, daughter's doing the whole eras tour high school romance thing. What am I doing? I'm probably watching sport. I'm probably just checking one set of scores whilst watching another game, and I'm invested in the game. And I'm enjoying the fact that Pep Guardiola is sinking into a pit because he's enjoyed so much pleasure and success over the years, and now the whole team's falling apart and Kyle Walker wants to leave.
Speaker 2:And there's something about that story where it's like oh yeah, we want to see those who are up at the top. We want to see them come low, don't we? So each member of my family would be engaged in a completely different story. They'd be in a different world. They'd be giving their attention to some other story. Now, if I was to come to your house, what story would I find you enjoying? Would it be the detective novel? Would it be the high school romance? Would it be the fantasy adventure? Would it be the sports story? Well, I'll be actually honest with you. Everything I've just told you is a complete lie. Because, I'll be honest, I want that to be the case.
Speaker 2:We all do play the video game, listen to the audio books and sing around to the songs, but typically we're not doing that at all, are we? We're doing this For hours just doing this. Then someone comes in and says you've been on that phone for ages and they go no, I'm not finished. I'm still going to the bottom of my feed to watch all the videos. Now, some of those videos are about the sports schools and about the high school romances and about the fantasy video games and their memes, and there's all sorts of stuff going on. But what is it that's gone on in the last few years? It's not been long. That means that almost all of us fall into a doom scrolling pit watching vertical videos until something or someone can interrupt us.
Speaker 2:What is going on, to the extent that we cannot control ourselves with our mobile phone use and so other people have to control it for us and that becomes probably maybe I'm wrong, maybe your life is totally different probably becomes the major tension point within your life, and phone use and constant scrolling becomes a sort of point of argument all the time. What's happened? Well, let me tell you. It's been a very short period of human history in which this has taken place. Okay, what year were you guys born? What are the sort of two years that you guys were born 2011, 2012, or 2010, 2011?, 10, 11?, 10, 11, right. So you guys were born 2010, 2011,. Right, almost everything that dominates our world was invented, created, released and launched in the five years prior to that. So no one's got any idea what to do with it, because it's not much older than you are and it's accelerated in its use massively. So, 2010, 2011,.
Speaker 2:You guys haven't ever lived in a world without the ubiquity of smartphones. Right, they've always been a part of the world. You weren't around before people were doing this, but this was magical for everyone else when it was invented and if you guys, your entire lives have been lived with this thing, so let me just say it's not your fault. Okay, these are powerful technologies and they're run by very clever people and they're designed to control your behavior. And that is what this morning, in this session, is all about Trying to think through, so that we're not just mindless consumers of our media, but actually we just think through a little bit more about what it means to have this kind of technology.
Speaker 2:What are we giving our attention to? About what it means to have this kind of technology. What are we giving our attention to? Now, let me just show you a little video. I made this video. This video is on my YouTube channel. Okay, and I've just said all that and I've got a YouTube channel. How ridiculous, right? But this is where people are, right. So we make videos on this channel where we're engaging, as I say, with reformed mythology, so the study of story from a Christian perspective. That's the point of it. Okay, and the way in which this works is to try to connect with people on there and then get them to go and do something else. That's kind of the idea. So I'll show you this video if I can get it to work, because I'm not very technical. I prefer a pen and a paper, if I'm honest, right. So we'll see if we can get it to work and then I'll ask you some questions about it okay, and there we go. That'll make you watch.
Speaker 2:There will be a quiz immediately following this short video clip. There will be a quiz immediately following this short video clip. Is that up? Oh, is it turned off? Ha, very good. So if you need to change the? So, where's the HDMI? How do you change the? Yeah, yeah, so how do you change that to HDMI? Have you got a remote for it? Stuart changes it somehow. I don't know what's this input. I'm just looking for the settings. Should I just put it back in again?
Speaker 1:try again ok has that worked?
Speaker 2:ok, alright, let me just check this one, ok, okay, all right, let me just check this one. Okay, there we go. Okay, yep, that's fine. I think it should be fine. Oh, hush, because there's something on the screen proving my point. Yeah, okay, so there'll be some questions after this video. Yeah, that's what. Let's see if it works. I's costly, so you have to prioritize it. The mechanisms that we use to prioritize our attention are the stories.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, we are flying from my backyard where I am smoking a pussy and cigarettes. I stopped to look. We ordered the groceries online and we literally opened your door. You ordered the groceries online and we literally opened your door. There's a code for every second of your life. We used to colonize land. That was a thing we would expand into. You colonized the entire earth. We're now trying to colonize every minute of your life.
Speaker 1:Smoke these beans here. That's why you call the liberals Smoke these beans. What would you love about the future? Smoke these beans, nice, I don't know. You work here. It's that age of focusing on these different things. You're a Jew. Why should we not buy for such controls A revolutionary role of a bomb now playing through internet communications with us An iPod, a phone and an internet communication.
Speaker 1:I have played through the NMT edition of the class. I have a phone and an NMT account. I have a phone and an NMT account. I have a phone and an NMT account. There's near limitless sources of diversion and almost everyone can't find anything that can hold their interest in the midst of the most amazing attempt to harvest human attention that this world has ever seen. That said something to me. Many of the people coming to me have what I call peopleism-induced depression, and it was a strange thing that watching videos of this man for anyone they could not believe in Genesis would believe they he was a deuce of correction. But then what I also learned was that that meditation had a short term effect, as it needed to follow without the stronger medicine, and that was the strangeness of this story that is leading to all of these other stories that we keep going throughout that process.
Speaker 2:Right Question number one Does anyone know who? The first person you saw on the screen was Slightly tricky. Maybe he's a bit old for you guys. Yes, isn't he some kind of Christian preacher? Yeah, that's no, but he does talk about those sorts of things. Anyone else know? Any of the teachers know? No, oh, jordan Peterson. Has anyone heard that name? No one's heard that name.
Speaker 2:So Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist and he rose to fame during a about 2015,. There was a debate over preferred pronoun use in the university that he was working in and he shot to notoriety and went online and then people discovered that he had all of these videos about psychology and psychiatry and growing as a person and developing and personal development and to the extent that he blew up online and that people would buy tickets around the world to go and listen to him speak in stadia so he'd literally go to like the O2 arena and people would listen to him giving lectures about psychology and psychology and, as you were saying, christian theology. He's not a Christian himself and yet he was having all of these people engaged in a conversation about what's meaningful and valuable. All right, easier question Was there anyone else on that video that you recognized that you could name? Yes, sir, michael Rosen. Okay, who is Michael Rosen? Do you know Michael Rosen? Okay, who is Michael Rosen? Do you know? He is a poet and children's author, right, so the guy who was like nice, yeah, you've seen him on the memes. Yeah, okay, so he rose to fame again because he was reading out his books something about potatoes being a bit hot or something and he just goes and he's got a very expressive face. Yes, sir, did you recognize anyone?
Speaker 2:Mark Zuckerberg, right before he became a bro, right before he went on and grew his hair and got into jujitsu, when he was just working for Facebook, he was announcing Facebook Live. He said we've got this new feature on our app and the new feature is that you can just stream yourself live. And he chose to stream his backyard, with him and some friends having a barbecue talking about smoking meats, and so that was going on there. Yes, sir, do you got anyone else? Steve Jobs Very good, right. Does anyone know who Steve Jobs was or is? Yeah, yeah, jobs. Very good, right. Does anyone know who Steve Jobs was or is? Yeah, yeah, the guy who created Apple? So, in 2007, way back in history, before any of you were born.
Speaker 2:Okay, steve Jobs stood on the stage at an Apple event and he said today we're going to launch a brand new iPod that was the thing that could only play music, by the way An internet communicator okay, because previously you had to go into a laptop computer at least, to do that and a mobile phone. He said it's going to be an iPod, an internet communicator, and a mobile phone an iPod, an internet communicator. A mobile phone, an iPod, an internet communicator. A mobile phone.
Speaker 2:It is the iPhone, and in 2007, that was totally like what you can do one thing in your pocket. That's amazing, so helpful, so useful. So in 2007, if you could get hold of an iPhone, you were like part of the top 1% of the 1%. But then by 2011, if you didn't have an iPhone, you were a loser, right, because they got released and then the price came down so people could start to afford to buy them themselves. And then the price went down again and so they could afford to start to buy them for their children. And by the time you got to 2011, the average teenager was the odd one out if they didn't have a smartphone. Now, I'm imagining that if you don't have a smartphone in this room right now, if you don't have a smartphone in this room right now.
Speaker 2:You're just considered a bit nuts. Or maybe I've misread it and maybe your parents are the generation who are starting to realize that, hold on, we should all go back to the dumb phone. Or maybe you are the hope for a post-technology world and you guys are saying, yeah, I'm not really into the smartphone technology stuff Not really me. It's a bit weird, isn't it? Let's all be groovy and hippie and just have Nokia 3210s. I may as well be talking about Henry VIII, right? So far back in history we couldn't possibly think about that. All right, so did you recognize anyone else?
Speaker 2:possibly think about that? All right, so did you recognize anyone else? Donald Trump, that's right, president, donald Trump, 45th president of the United States of America, and later this week will be confirmed as the 47th president of the United States. Does anyone know what year Donald Trump became the president of the United States of America? Know what year Donald Trump became the President of the United States of America? Anyone know? Yes, sir, pardon, 2016. Bang on, okay, very good.
Speaker 2:2016 is a very important year in our culture. Okay, donald Trump became President of the United States, which was a massive shock. Whoever you voted for, it wasn't expected. And also, that year, in the UK, brexit happened, which, again, whichever way you voted, was a massive shock. In 2016, when you guys were 5 or 6, little five or six year olds look at you. Yeah, 2016, the world went mad. Donald Trump and Brexit. But do you know what? That wasn't even the most significant thing that happened in 2016. Because the most significant thing that happened in 2016 was the invention of and Donald Trump mentioned it on the video. Did anyone notice? What did Donald Trump say on the video?
Speaker 2:2016 was the invention of TikTok. So prior to 2016,. Typically, when people went on their mobile phones, on their smartphones or onto the internet to go on their social media, they were not scrolling through vertical videos. Right Before 2016, most people, when they're watching a video, would have their phone like this Notters, right. How crazy is that? You only do that if you're playing some kind of shared video game or watching a football match, right? They would hold their phones like this to watch videos. Crazy people. Who's got the time to watch videos in landscape?
Speaker 2:Now, in 2016, tiktok changed the world. Because tiktok released videos that looked like this and they realized that this was the way to get people to stay on the phone for longer. You would endlessly scroll through the videos. You'd keep watching them and pretty soon after TikTok had done that, facebook decided that they would have their stories. They would be vertical videos. Instagram decided they would have their reels they would be vertical videos and YouTube decided we've got to have shorts, so that everything collapsed into this vertical video abyss. And now it doesn't matter whether you're on Facebook, tiktok, even Twitter you're, or whatever. You will be scrolling through a vertical video and that's the thing to get you. We'll have a think about why that's happened.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir Elon Musk, elon Musk, right. That was Elon Musk before he bought Twitter. Now X, okay, very good. Yeah, anyone else? Jeffrey Jeffrey Bezos, right? Amazoncom so you saw him there being interviewed, talking about the ability to send people stuff directly to their door. You order them online, we deliver them to your door Evil, maniacal laugh.
Speaker 2:And then we put that with a clip from a Pixar film. What Pixar film did you see in that video? Yes, sir WALL-E, right. Probably one of the greatest Pixar films ever made, right? Absolute masterpiece. First five minutes alone is genius level visual storytelling, right. And it tells a future in which humanity's had to leave and go off to live on a great big spaceship called the Axiom. And what do they do on that great big spaceship called the Axiom? They sit on their hover chairs and they have their gigantic drinks and they have a screen placed over their face.
Speaker 2:And I'll be honest when I get a day off, what do I want to do? What is my typical default? When someone says you've got free time, you do what you like. My typical default is to go and find somewhere that I can lie down with a drink and hold my phone up in front of my face for several hours. And how has that happened? Why is it so typical that that's what we want to do? Why is our attention, our time spent when we can literally go and do anything else we want to do? Why is it that we default to these vertical videos streaming constantly? Anyone spot anyone else in that video that they recognized? I think we might have been through pretty much everyone. Yeah, that was pretty much it.
Speaker 2:So that video is about prioritizing your attention. Your attention is a very valuable thing. You only have so much of it. You can only give your attention to one thing at a time. Now here's the worst thing the double screening. Anyone double screen Because you're such a big brain boy that you cannot just play a video game. Okay, you've also got a YouTube streamer playing the same game behind it. You're like Iron man. You're so genius level. But our attention is finite. It's really limited and it therefore is really important what we give our attention to.
Speaker 2:Now. We've got about 10 minutes left before we're going to have some time for questions, but I want to just give you some ideas and some thoughts about how it is that we got to where we are. Ok, so we're here in 2025. Crazy, right? Who thought we'd get here 2016,? No one thought we'd get to 2025. That was just crazy. And then 2020, when we had COVID, everyone was like no chance we we'd get to 2025. That was just crazy. And then 2020, when we had COVID, everyone was like no chance we'll make it to 2025. But we are here, and how do we get to this stage with our technology use? That's the question.
Speaker 2:So, as I said from the outset, we live in an attention economy. Your eyeballs and your eardrums are for sale. People make money by getting and keeping your attention. They sell advertising so that you, the advertising is sold in so far as you will give your attention to it. And if you're giving your attention to one thing, it can't be something else Now, and if you're giving your attention to one thing, it can't be something else Now. One of the ways that they make this very, very addictive is something called portion bias. I'm actually going to write it down here.
Speaker 2:Apparently, the clever people who do science experiments realized that human beings have something called portion bias. Portion bias means that you and I are predisposed to take one unit of something. We don't like to leave something unfinished. There's something about us as human beings that psychologically, we want to know how much a portion of something is, and then we'll take that. So they did a test with some sugar balls. This is back in the days when people had tea with sugar in it. Right, you're not allowed to do that anymore. Okay, because everyone's healthy. But the point was that they would put a sugar bowl in the room and they would expect people to take a sugar or their tea. But what they discovered was whether the spoon was twice the size or half the size. People still took one portion. So if you half the size of the spoon, people take half the amount of sugar. If you double the size of the spoon, people would take double the amount of sugar.
Speaker 2:So the people who control the portion size, determine the amount of consumption, and that might not sound relevant to you because you're like I don't even drink tea, I don't even want sugar in my tea. Anyway, what is all this about? The point is, the people who were designing the internet realized early on that if you scroll down and you got to the end of the page, you were like I finished, I finished that website, I'll do something else now. I'll go somewhere else Now if they're making money by keeping you on the website.
Speaker 2:They don't want you to get to the end of the page because they don't want you to leave. Come back, there's more. So what they did was they created something called and this sounds like it's a Marvel film or something Infinity scrolling so that you can't get to the bottom of the internet, so that there's always something else for you to look at, so that the website never says you're done, that's all we've got. You've bled us dry. There's always something else, and so you'll always feel like you haven't finished. You guys might not know this, but some of the teachers will. There is an existential doubt that comes to all adult British people. When they know they haven't finished a cup of tea and it's somewhere in the house, they're like I had a cup of tea, but I don't think I finished it. In fact, if they're teachers in the staff room, they probably never finished a cup of tea, but the point is they've got this feeling but I never quite got to the end of it, and it leaves them feeling a bit anxious, a bit uneasy.
Speaker 2:Now, if people feel anxious when they haven't finished their tea, think how anxious people are when this, when they haven't finished their tea. Think how anxious people are when this is a nice segue when they haven't spilled the tea. That's me trying to do some Rizora stuff. It doesn't work, does it? I'll stop. But if there's more tea to be spilled, right. If there's more gossip to pick up on, if there's more dank memes out there, right. If there's more dank memes out there, right. If there's more stuff to consume and you might not get to it, then that's going to leave you feeling anxious. So one of the things that they've done with the technology is to basically create a situation in which you are always wanting more, and so we go back to it because we might have missed something, but then ultimately, because we never get to the end of it, it doesn't satisfy us, so we don't go. Yum, I'm done. So that's one of the challenges that we face, particularly with the vertical video, infinity scrolling social media sites.
Speaker 2:Now, everything I've said so far has been about the format or the medium of what you're looking at on the internet. I haven't even mentioned the content of what you're looking at, and the trouble is, most of the time, most of the concern about young people and technology is about Andrew Tate or OnlyFans. Okay, so that's the content, right? That's the stuff that people are looking at. That's the stuff that you're really going back for. You're not going back because of vertical videos. You're going back because of what the vertical video is showing, what you might get out of it, and it might be something you're proud to look at. It might be something you want to get your phone out and show it to your friends and say look, what I've just been looking at on the internet. Or it might be stuff that you don't want anyone to know you were looking at on the internet, the stuff that you're basically ashamed of knowing you're looking at.
Speaker 2:The stuff that if we managed to stream your phone onto this screen. You would want to die?
Speaker 1:So that's the challenge.
Speaker 2:If the scrolling makes us feel a bit anxious because we haven't finished and some of I'm not saying all the content, some of the content leaves not saying all the content, some of the content leaves us feeling guilty and ashamed and useless and dirty, then what do we do with that? Now, this is where the Christian message, the Reed mythologist, is, I think, for me so helpful, because the attention economy is all about looking, beholding, and beholding is a very biblical word Look, right, next time you want to show someone something, don't say look, they'll be like, uh, lame, look. Say look, they'll be like, uh, lame. Look. Say behold, they'll be like, ooh, behold, ancient, mysterious, wow, ooh right, in the Bible often, particularly in John's Gospel, people are told to behold, people are told to behold. And what is it that? The Bible? And as Christians, okay, they are told to look at. Well, they're told to look at Jesus. That might sound obvious, right, but what is it about this Jesus, according to the scriptural Bible's representation of him? That is so helpful for people who might be feeling anxious and ashamed and embarrassed and guilty. Well, because the Bible starts in John's gospel says behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's the basic idea of looking at Jesus. That's why the symbol of Jesus is the cross. That's why churches have crosses on them, so that people are looking at the cross where Jesus, the Lamb of God, according to the Scriptures, took away the sins of the world. According to the scriptures, took away the sins of the world.
Speaker 2:So, whatever other practices you want to do about trying to touch grass a little more regularly, or trying to control your mobile phone use, or working with other people to say, look, I'm really struggling with this, as a Christian, my way of coping in this attention economy is to behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That's why, as a Christian, the meditative practice is to meditate, to focus on Jesus Christ, because in a world where people are feeling anxious and embarrassed, ashamed and guilty, actually there is something that I can look to that can give me hope in the face of real challenges. So, as I say, none of you are at fault for the world being the way that it is right With the mobile phone thing. It was all happening just before you were born. But there are major challenges that you've got to face now as teenagers, as students of beads and will have to face as you go up into adult life. These are challenges that many generations have not had to face, and so you're going to need all the help you can get.
Speaker 2:We've left a little bit of time now for some questions. I appreciate some of that stuff towards the end was maybe a bit heavy, so let me just think through some of the other things you might want to ask questions about. Okay, so we talked about story and storytelling towards the beginning, whether it's detective novels or video games or songs and sports. We've talked about mobile phone technology. We've talked about the attention economy. We've talked about portion bias and infinity scrolling and obviously you've seen some clips on that video and infinity scrolling, and obviously you've seen some clips on that video. Has anybody got any questions? They can be as simple and basic as you want, or I could just keep talking for another five minutes. Fine, any questions? Yep, I'm sure that it will go well with what?
Speaker 1:we have in the face of debt. How do you feel that technology attention?
Speaker 2:is helping to achieve their goals. Wow, I was expecting a question like what's your favorite video?
Speaker 2:game Gordon Carrera talking about the Chinese influence through technology. That's a remarkable question, but I'm sure it's what everyone was thinking about. That's a brilliant question. So clearly right. Once you've got big corporations right, big businesses, and you've got big countries which are working with those big businesses, there are going to be some challenges to how different countries set their limits in terms of what's available. And because when I said it was called the attention economy, it's also called the surveillance capitalism. Did I use that phrase earlier on? Surveillance capitalism, right? So of course, they're watching what you're watching. They're watching what you're watching so they can tweak the algorithm to show you more of what you'd like, so that, if you wanted to take things in a particular direction, social media is the most powerful tool anyone's ever come up with to persuade people. So, exactly to your point about how the Chinese are involved in data harvesting or kind of creating AI content that's going to warp the West, I don't think I'm quite knowledgeable enough to know the details of that. However, you're exactly right that this now becomes like a global thing, so it can affect the results of elections and it can have an impact on the way that people are living their lives day to day.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a question. What was that podcast? By the way, it's a history podcast. It's a new podcast, it's called China of the West. Okay, very interesting. Yeah, very interesting indeed. Anyone else? It doesn't have to be that highbrow, or it can be Sure, sure, oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:So my favourite video game. I was going to say on the tail, but I won't. I actually found a video game when I was researching stuff on the intention economy. Right, I was working writing one night and I came up with a sentence that blew my own mind. If you've ever done this, writing an essay or a paper for class I wrote this sentence down and I put down my pencil and I smiled to myself. Right, this is the sentence.
Speaker 2:We become what we behold. Good, right, no wasted words on that. We become what we behold. Lots of W's, lots of B's, right, great. Lots of ease. We become pardon. Well, that's what I thought, young man.
Speaker 2:But then I went online, I went on googlecom to see if anyone had ever used the phrase we become what we behold before. Turns out, they had turns out. Not only had they done that, but someone had made a video game to your question, called we become what we behold, and in that video game. It only takes literally five minutes to play and it works as a browser thing, but it's it's all about the attention economy. So if we'd have more time I would have actually got one of you to come up and play that game. We become what we behold. Basically, it's about what we give our attention to affects the way that we think. So what you behold starts to shape who you are. We shape the tools and then the tools shape us. So, yeah, that would probably be my favorite video game we become what we behold. It takes five minutes to play and you can find it online.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir. Last one, my favourite music artist other than Taylor Swift. I might just have to go with Tay-Tay, to be honest, but I do also like Johnny Cash. Is that the name man in Black? That guy was very cool, johnny Cash. That was a yawn, not a hand up, just to check Is that it.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's perfect. Well, we've learned so much about what we give our attention to, how these devices hold our attention, and I'm sure you can agree with me, guys. That was a wonderful talk and very informative, so let's give Nate a round of applause. Thank you All right. Thank you so much, everybody. I think that leaves us to Do. You need to stay seated, doctor? Yeah, so let's go from like we do in chapel anyway. So front rows first, and then you stream out and enjoy your PE with your PE teachers now. Thank you everybody, guys.