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.

Extracted from a free talk given at the RSA in London, 2017