The Normie’s Guide to Thinking About Tech
Cal Newport and Jesse Miller discuss techno-selectionism, Newport's middle path between tech doom and tech hype. He lays out four practical ways to take control of the technology in your life, plus listener questions and his October reading.
The gist
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Newport argues for techno-selectionism, rejecting both Luddite-style pessimism and Elon Musk-style optimism, and steering toward progress while avoiding as many harms as possible.
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His four C's are choosing which tech to use, configuring rules for it, changing your mind, and complaining to institutions, like parents pushing school phone bans.
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Newport uses chatbots as a missing manual for poorly documented software; when ChatGPT misled him on his Halloween display, Gemini found the fix.
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Newport points to Lawrence Wright's handwritten folder system for The Looming Tower, arguing slow, effortful work matters more than automated research tools.
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Newport's October reads included Ari Emanuel's memoir Roll With the Calls, which he found psychologically astute, and The Treeline, a dense, deeply researched environmental book.
Cal Newport uses it
"So, I went over to Gemini and it had the right answer. Which was when Gemini will more aggressively use Google searching. Unplug the ethernet and plug it back in to the lighting circuit that's going to actually trigger a hard reset of the ethernet configuration. So I use it a ..."
▶ Play at 30:4073 creators recommend it, including Claire Vo, GaryVee, and Dave Blundin.
See all on the Gemini page
Cal Newport uses it
"I read Ari Emanuel's memoir, Roll With the Calls... It's good, right? Because he's using the same ghostwriter who ghostwrote the Andre Agassi memoir... So it was psychologically astute and written in the tone of the way his mind thought."
▶ Play at 51:11
Cal Newport uses it
"Oh, Tree Line. So, that was a dense book. I liked that book... Incredibly deeply researched. Slow going. More so than other environmental writers like a Bill McKibben or an Elizabeth Kolbert... but very well written and just a momentous amount of research."
▶ Play at 55:28What they recommend · 3 picks
"So, I went over to Gemini and it had the right answer. Which was when Gemini will more aggressively use Google searching. Unplug the ethernet and plug it back in to the lighting..."
"Oh, Tree Line. So, that was a dense book. I liked that book... Incredibly deeply researched. Slow going. More so than other environmental writers like a Bill McKibben or an Eliz..."
"I read Ari Emanuel's memoir, Roll With the Calls... It's good, right? Because he's using the same ghostwriter who ghostwrote the Andre Agassi memoir... So it was psychologically..."
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