1. Page views.
2. Ad impressions.

There is no agenda. Controversial headlines, even if they’re inaccurate, drive page views and then drive ad impressions. It’s not that The Wall Street Journal doesn’t like Apple, it’s that The Wall Street Journal knows anti-Apple headlines and stories drive clicks. End of story. You want them to stop? You know what to do.

The computer, the tablet, and the smartphone offer myriad ways of getting distracted from the task at hand. The Internet is there, waiting, with the latest pithy comments from Twitter, the potential of the important email from your client, or a classic episode of The Simpsons. There’s MP3s to tag, new task managers to install, and computer games to play. The sheer number of things the technology allows us to do can be overwhelming. So, we retreat to old ways when we want to avoid the ones that distract us. A paper book won’t pop up a Game Center notification, or buzz with a new text message, after all.

I think that those who seek the old, “distraction-free” ways of doing things underestimate the number of distractions inherent in everyday life. Your book won’t buzz when it’s your turn in Letterpress, but your land-line phone can ring with a telemarketer who wants to reduce your credit card rate. Your neighbor can knock at your door. The mail might get delivered. The cat wants to be fed. There could even just be something good on TV that you forgot about.

The thing about technology, and its distractions, is that in the end, we control it, it does not—or at least should not—control us. Show me one buzzing, chirping, distraction laden digital device that doesn’t also offer a way to shut it up for an arbitrary length of time. In movies, TV shows, and books of a certain time, a shorthand for someone who wanted true, uninterrupted time to themselves was to unplug the telephone. It was as close to a guarantee of no distractions as you could get. While it’s not as easy as pulling a plug out of a wall, we still have that power.

Unplug the Ethernet cable, and turn off Wi-Fi. Turn on Do Not Disturb on your phone, or—even better—Airplane Mode. Quit your IM client, your e-mail client, your newsreader, your Twitter client. Turn off your smartphone entirely. If something has the potential to distract you, when you need to concentrate, mute it, disable it, or turn it off. The power of our devices to distract us is second to our ability to avoid them with some vigilance and knowledge.

A few of the writers I follow online, such as Patrick Rhone, and Harry C. Marks have started to use a more analog workflow [1] when they write. Patrick has switched to writing with pen and paper, Harry is using a vintage Smith-Corona typewriter to work on his novel. They claim that these writing methods allow them to work better, put themselves in another mindspace, and free themselves from distraction. They’re all absolutely right. But, it’s not right for me.

I’ve tried doing the disconnection thing, switching to pen and paper, or a typewriter to work. [2] I’ve carried every sort of notebook you can think of, from 8.5“ by 11” school notebooks to Pocket Moleskines, to Field Notes. They rarely get used. I lust over a good pen—my favorite being the Zebra Sarassa, but pens do me little good just clipped to the inside of my pants pocket. If I want to write, and if I want to do sustained writing, I have to do it in the digital space. Otherwise, I just shut down after too short of a time.

My iPad, actually, has become the best place for me to write. With the Apple Aluminum Bluetooth keyboard, and Drafts, I can plop down on any flat surface, and get right to work. I’m typing this up in my neighborhood coffee shop, on a lovely, warm Saturday afternoon. Here, I’m able to go into a different mental state, free from the distractions of home. My mind goes entirely into my writing the text on the screen in front of me. Even better is that when it’s done, I can read it. Six years of Catholic school education and daily handwriting classes did me no good. My scrawl is often illegible to anyone except me, and sometimes even me.

The analog methods have their advantages. A mechanical typewriter can’t run out of battery power. A notepad and pen won’t shatter if you drop it. What you write on them is permanent, or as close to permanent as is possible with paper. There is a very real, though very small chance, that any second the screen in front of me will die, taking my words with it. The worst that can happen to Patrick is that his pen will leak, and some of the ink will spill over a few words. Every method we use has its tradeoffs.

When Nietzsche got a typewriter, he noticed that writing on it changed what he wrote. He wasn’t sure if it was for the better, or for the worse, but it was a difference. For those of us who are trying to decide between digital writing and analog writing, this is something to consider. Whatever works best for you, whatever allows you to produce the work you want is what you should use, whether it’s Microsoft Word, a mechanical typewriter, pen and paper, or a stylus and wax tablet. I’ve found what works best for me is to use technology, and to use it on my own terms. More on that another time.

So, internationally-beloved technology journalist Andy Ihnatko gave up his iPhone for a Galaxy SIII. Cue wailing, gnashing of teeth, and cries of “Betrayer” from the Apple faithful. Or not. I don’t know. Andy’s three piece article, the third act of which I linked to above, is an interesting analysis of the differences between Android and iOS, the strengths and weakness of each, and how they’ve influenced his decision. I can’t fault him for making the choice, especially since my exposure to Android on a phone is my girlfriend’s HTC G2, which runs Android 2.3.

I’ve run into a few of the same problems with my iPhone as Andy, including accidentally triggering dictation, and difficulty moving data between apps. I’ve not, however, had a great deal of desire to do a lot of the tricking out and customization that Android allows. To re-quote the eminently quotable Merlin Mann, I like the “Catholic” experience of Apple, and not having to fiddle with things. iOS works for me out of the box on day one, and a month later, I have it as good as it’s likely ever going to get to suit my needs. Andy agrees. He just wants to go further.

When the first part of Andy’s article dropped, there was grumbling in various quarters of the Internet that, “Well, of course Andy can just drop his iPhone and switch to Android. He gets to play with every new phone that comes out. The rest of us have to make a commitment.” This is a sentiment of resignation mixed with sour grapes that Andy addressed. I suspect that a lot of the partisan rage of our chosen platforms, be it a smartphone, a desktop OS, or a commitment to open source, has a root in the amount of buy-in we have in these things. If you’ve used any platform long enough, worn yourself in, customized everything to your liking, and know how to get a new piece of hardware working the way you like it in a short timespan, jumping to something else is an outright pain the ass. I know, because I only jumped from Windows to Linux, and Linux to Mac after the pain of sticking with the previous choice was higher than the pain of switching.

So, we stick our heels in the mud, get further entrenched, and yell at the people who split from our herd, no matter the reasons behind it. Because we’ve invested so much in our position, someone’s defection from what we consider our group is an insult to ourselves. It’s the narcissism of small differences all over again. Stepping back just a bit, and paying attention to the points someone makes, especially if they disagree with you, helps break that, but it’s hard to do for the reasons outlined above. It can be done, especially when someone with a loud voice and position of journalistic authority expresses themselves. You don’t have to agree, but you have to acknowledge that they have a valid point, and they have the ability to choose without it affecting you.

I’d like to expand a bit a point I made, yesterday, in my post “Scams, Shortcuts, and Honest Work”, namely this:

Technology is an enabler to them, offering myriad new avenues of dodges and scams, hidden traps for the unwary to fall into.

And, secondarily, this:

The power of the Internet, and technology in general, is often seen as shortcut to success.

Technology is an enabler to all of us, not just to those who seek to bend it towards the exploitation of others. While “independent content creation” pre-dates the Internet and widespread access to technology, the ubiquity of the Internet has been the biggest boon to individual people who make stuff since the dawn of economics. That is not hyperbole, either. It’s extremely easy, and extremely inexpensive to get started on any sort of creative project, and put it in front of people. Not only that, there’s plenty of people and services available to help you get started. Make music? Sign up for SoundCloud, and post your MP3s. Want to start a blog? WordPress.com offers you a free blog. Making crafts? Etsy.

It’s easy to get stated, but that also means that it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. There are some who say all you need to do is make good stuff, and eventually, the audience will come. [1] This is not a guarantee, especially if you’re not making good stuff. And if you’re not making anything, nobody’s going to come at all. Technology is only a tool. We need to use it to make anything, and it cares not a whit what we use it for. A router can’t determine if the packets running through it make a page of Spike’s amazing webcomic Templar, Arizona, or a keyword spam article, and more importantly, it shouldn’t.

There’s so much out there, however, that it is terribly hard to be heard above the din. We’ve sought shortcuts to find ways to make money, get attention, or both, with less work. Recently, someone discovered a seller on Amazon offering a T-Shirt with the slogan: “Keep Calm and Rape a Lot.” The sheer offensiveness of such a thing aside, it was quickly determined that the product actually didn’t exist. It was the creation of a computer program designed to come up with products based on the “Keep Calm and…” meme, and printed on demand if anyone was disgusting enough to buy it.

The seller, seeking to capitalize on a fad, found what seems like a shortcut to success. Just design a bunch of stuff that might be popular, list it on Amazon, and maybe one might succeed. If it does, they just create the physical product when necessary. The end result is probably not what they expected. It’s not Amazon’s fault that Solid Gold Bomb’s algorithm made an offensive shirt, and it’s not Solid Gold Bomb’s fault that Amazon listed it. Amazon’s service, and the algorithm are intermediaries. They’re tools. The tools can be misused, but that is not the fault of the tools. There are thousands of legitimate businesses built on Amazon’s distribution, and there are billions or more algorithms that do things that make our lives better.

The final decision about how we use these tools is our own. Technology can enable us to do amazing, positive things that benefit our world, or it can enable us to exploit the ignorance, sloth, or greed of others. Whichever we choose, the result comes not from the technology, but from the choices made by those who wield it. If we do evil, we must blame ourselves, and we must take action to stop it.