The difference is that modern society isn’t optimized for productivity, it’s optimized for consumption and attention. 30 years ago you could go days without seeing ads, now companies send notifications to the nuisance devices in your pocket and on your wrist. It’s no wonder we have a harder time focusing and accomplishing things. Even being aware of the problem isn’t enough to fully protect one’s attention and intention.
If anything, it is easier to avoid advertising today than it was 30 years ago. You can block notifications, spam filters are significantly better, content filters at the web browser and DNS level are available. On top of that, certain nuisance devices are possible to avoid. For example: you can still buy traditional watches.
Contrast that to 30 years ago. Nearly all radio stations, television stations, news papers, and periodicals included a lot of advertising. Telemarketers were certainly a thing. Advertising in public spaces was certainly a thing. You could consciously avoid most of those things, but you would also be isolating yourself in the process.
Perhaps you could make that argument if you were talking about 100 years ago, of people who lived in rural areas, and had very little contact outside of their community. Even then, you are talking about a form of isolation. The only difference is that type of isolation was much more common.
It's optimized for profit. Ideally these would be one in the same. In any case our productivity is easily an order of magnitude greater today than it was 100 years ago. The lack of technical progress into our legislatures and courts even though we currently poses the ability to afford the same order of magnitude improvements is a curiosity and implies there's a form of corruption that's taken root. This seems to allow non productive companies to command most of the profits.
> a harder time focusing and accomplishing things
Relative to self reports? The grass was probably greener and the schools were definitely better too. You might as well note that jobs have not gotten any more complex nor opportunities any wealthier in that time. People still flip burgers and sling french fries for minimum wage. They used to goof off out back now they troll the internet in their off moments.
> isn’t enough to fully protect one’s attention and intention.
Outer space is super exciting. Until people realize it takes months to make it even just to Mars. Our attention span was never that great to begin with.
It wasn’t optimized for profit 30 years ago..?
Some exaggeration above, but less than would be fair.
Check the "Secret history of Silicon Valley" by Steve Blank:
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
All these are now in the mature stage.
New technologies are built in China now with their large industrial base and large markets.