Dear Tommi Nieminen,

Today in Helsingin Sanomat you wrote about your inability to concentrate on things that you would like to concentrate on. Specifically, you described how your smartphone makes it difficult for you to focus on reading a book.

In your article, you suggested that writers should start writing better books – books that are so engrossing that while reading them, you would be able to ignore the constant stream of notificiations coming from your smartphone.

I would like to point out that what you're suggesting is impossible. Your smartphone has been designed to maximize the time you spend looking at it; it is as addictive as it is because it has been created by companies that know the vulnerabilities of your psyche much better than you do and have the expertise to exploit those vulnerabilities.

It is very powerful lizard brain stuff that makes it hard for you to ignore your smartphone when it makes a sound. As a writer, I can't compete with that. If I tried to compete with that, it would result in some really shitty (and boring) literature.

The greatness of a great book is, and must be, based on something else.

A truly great reading experience is like having a series of extraordinarily long, profound, and honest conversations with someone you've never met before. Obviously, in an experience like this, your role is just as important as that other person's role. If I'm trying to have a conversation with you and you're dividing your attention between me and all of social media, it doesn't really matter how compelling my ideas are, or how interestingly I tell a story; you will end up ignoring a large percentage of what I say, because I haven't been designed by thousands of people who know exactly how to hijack your attention. I'm just me, trying to tell a story.

The point is: if you're not willing to limit the stream of notifications coming from your phone, or silence your phone even for a few moments, to me that just sounds like you don't really want to concentrate on stuff that you supposedly "want to concentrate on".

You prefer to be distracted.

Lots of people do. I think that it would be great if people took a step back and asked themselves seriously why this is.

It's not an easy question to answer. I believe that to understand what's going on with people and their relationship to these technologies, it would be necessary to look at the culture more broadly, more deeply, and try to figure out what made people so bored with themselves and so uncomfortable with silence in the first place. Luckily, I don't have to try to do that in a blog post. I can try to write a book.