Those seeds of doubt grew into a hearty techno-skepticism that inspired both his hit 2016 book Deep Work (about the merits of mono-tasking and deep concentration in a world of constant distraction) and his newest release: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. As Facebook’s presence mushroomed exponentially, Newport found himself watching and wondering, why are people so into this? Because that vendetta ended up giving him a unique perspective: While everyone else was sucked up in the ultra-connected, social media vortex, Newport maintained his distance. Well, anyone who says jealousy doesn’t serve you should speak to Newport. “Like: ‘Oh why is his company so popular? I'm not gonna give him the satisfaction of using his product.’” “There was probably a little bit of petty jealousy,” Newport says. He wasn’t exactly jazzed, then, that all of his buddies were so excited about this Zuckerberg guy’s project. One, he has always disliked listing his favorite things, and back then Facebook “was this presentation of self-fame: ‘Here’s my favorite movies, my favorite books.’” Two, he had, not long before, shut down a tech company he’d started during the dot com boom. “There was very little scary about 2004 Facebook,” he says. This was not the moral or political objection it might be today. In 2004, when Cal Newport was still an undergrad at Dartmouth, all his friends were making accounts on a new website called Facebook.
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