Just like Santa's truck and Mariah Carey's trills, another holiday sound is already in the air: the sound of bank cards being drained. It has surely happened to you or to someone close to you. An email tempts you with mouthwatering discounts. You fall for an attractive deal, and when you go to collect the goods… something completely different arrives. You get a message about a purchase you don't remember making, you pay for it, and then it turns out there's no option to return it and you've spent money on something utterly useless.

Let whoever has never fallen for such an attack cast the first mouse!

The most direct route is still email. (And shortly after New Year's we'll share the painfully telling results of an experiment that proves it.)

Yes, in recent years e-commerce has offered plenty of convenience. But it also comes with a number of dangers. On the eve of the holidays, I invited Viktor Rachev, a cybersecurity specialist at the specialized company SoCyber, to help us with practical advice on what to watch out for.

Read it, think it over. Show it to your family and friends too. It could well help you avoid an unpleasant mistake.

1. Check the sender's email address

Don't look only at the name—look at the whole email address. Scammers often use addresses that merely resemble the official ones, with small spelling mistakes or a different domain (for example, info@banksecurity.net instead of info@bank.bg).

2. The greeting is too generic

If you get an email from your bank or another institution that knows your details, it will most likely address you by name. Be suspicious of generic greetings such as
“Dear Customer” or “Dear User.”

3. A sense of urgency or threat is created

This is the most commonly used psychological trick. Emails threatening that your account will be closed, that you owe money, or that you must act “immediately” are designed to make you panic and act on impulse, without thinking.

4. Suspicious links

Always check where a link leads before you click. On a computer, simply hover your mouse cursor over it and the real address will appear in the bottom corner of the browser. If the link text says bank.bg but the real address leads to bit.ly/random or bankpromo.xyz, it's a scam.

5. Unexpected or strange attachments

Never open attachments you aren't expecting, especially ones with extensions such as .exe, .zip, .scr, or even .html. They often contain viruses that can infect your device.

6. The offer is too good to be true

If you get a message saying you've won a lottery you never entered, or you're offered a product at an absurdly low price, it's almost certainly a scam.

7. Spelling mistakes and poor design

Large companies have teams that take care of their communications. Emails full of grammatical or spelling errors, or ones with blurry logos and sloppy design, are a clear sign of a scam.

8. Requests for sensitive information

No legitimate institution (a bank, a government agency, a social network) will ever ask you to send your password, PIN, credit card number, or EGN, the Bulgarian personal identification number, by email.

9. Content that doesn't add up

You get an email from a courier company about a parcel you aren't expecting? Or a notification from Netflix that there's a problem with your payment, when you don't even have a subscription? Mismatches like these are a sure sign of phishing.

10. The message is completely unexpected

If you get a password-reset email you didn't request, or an order confirmation for something you never ordered, simply ignore it and delete it.

How do we protect ourselves?

4 key recommendations for everyone

Here are four basic steps anyone can take to protect themselves from a phishing attack.

1. Be more curious and more suspicious

The most powerful weapon against phishing is critical thinking. Before you click any link at all, take 10 seconds to ask yourself the following questions:

Who is the sender?

Look at the whole email address, not just the name. Scammers often use addresses that merely resemble the official ones (e.g., promo@luko1l.info instead of promo@lukoil.bg).

Is there anything unusual?

Unexpected offers, surprising messages about account problems, or spelling and grammar mistakes are a clear red flag.

Where does this link really lead?

Hover your mouse cursor over the link (without clicking!) and look at the address that appears in the bottom corner of the browser. If it looks odd or has nothing to do with the company, don't open it.

Are they pressuring you to act “right now”?

Scammers count on impulsive reactions. Phrases like “Last chance!”, “Your account will be deleted!” or “Today only!” are meant to stop you from thinking clearly.

2. Report it! Don't just delete it

When you simply delete a suspicious email, you solve the problem only for yourself. When you report it, you help everyone else.

Every email client (Gmail, Abv—a popular Bulgarian email service—Outlook, and others) has an easy-to-use “Report spam” or “Report phishing” button. Using it sends a signal to the service provider, which can block the sender and protect thousands of other users from the same scam.

When you come across a suspicious email, your first reaction may be just to delete it. But if you take a second to report it, you go from potential victim to an active part of everyone's defense.

When you report phishing, you:

• Protect thousands of other people. Every report is a signal for email service providers (Gmail, Abv, Outlook, and others). Their filters learn from these signals, and the next time the same email is sent to another user, there's a much better chance it will land automatically in the spam folder or be blocked entirely.
• Help take down fake websites. Reports are also analyzed by cybersecurity companies and hosting providers. Once enough signals pile up, the fake site the link leads to can be taken down much faster. That way you actively help remove the “trap” before others fall into it.
• Improve your own protection. When you mark a certain type of message as malicious, you help your own email filter get smarter and protect you more effectively in the future.

3. Trust the technology you already use

The good news is that the big email providers have already put powerful protections in place. Their filters automatically stop a huge percentage of malicious messages. They also use sophisticated technologies (such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) that check whether an email really comes from the sender it claims to be from. To take advantage of these protections:

• Use an established, modern email provider.
• Keep your web browser and antivirus software regularly updated.

4. Understand the value of simulations

Running simulations regularly is one of the most effective training methods, both for large companies and for society as a whole. They help us stay alert and turn knowledge into a practical habit. Don't be surprised if, for example, your employer sends you an email to test whether you'd fall for an attack like this. The idea is that next time you'll stop and think. And we all win from that.

Nothing complicated? Exactly—at least after Viktor's thorough guidance. And if even one person stays safe after reading this text and thinking it over, then it's definitely worth carrying on.

As for whether it's needed—there's no question, as will become clear shortly after New Year's, when we'll tell you about the experiment we ran together with Viktor and his colleagues.

Until then: happy… and wise holidays!

Our brain has developed over the course of evolution, gradually getting used to a changing environment… and then came Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Suddenly we find ourselves in a world for which our most important organ turns out to be completely unprepared. And it copes… as best it can. It tries to adapt, but there is no way this can happen without a breakdown.

Not a breakdown, a catastrophe. One we cannot even take in, because we cannot stop, think, talk it over. We are too busy moving on. Scrolling, browsing, bickering… Like a hamster on a wheel.

Anders Hansen is a Swedish psychiatrist who is not afraid to raise the big questions of today's technological age. Precisely the questions that are the reason the site you have landed on exists. Hansen is read all over the world, and fortunately so—because if you find the time to reflect on the messages he leaves, it will certainly help you pay attention to the questions that really matter.

That matter to every one of us.

His new book is called Insta-Brain; it recently came out in Bulgarian and brings together so many important topics we like to avoid. If you read it, your brain will thank you. I have tried to gather 10 key points.

Ahead lie no fewer than 10 headings ending in an exclamation mark (forgive me!)! Because it is definitely time to be amazed, to wake up, to think! And Dr. Hansen gives us plenty of reasons to do so.

1. Cut the Wireless Cord!

“If we were left without our mobile phones, our world would collapse—40% would rather lose their voice for an entire day (really!) than be parted from it. Wherever we look—downtown, in the café, in restaurants, on the bus, at dinner, even at the gym—everyone is looking at their phone. Whatever our opinion on the matter, we have become addicted!

On average we use our phones for 3 hours a day. Of course, some spend less time on them and others even more. Is there anything the heaviest phone users have in common? When scientists studied the mobile habits of nearly 700 students, they found that a third of the participants in the experiment were so addicted that they could not stay away from their device even at night. As a result, they were tired during the day.”

That we are addicted is beyond dispute. We can easily see it in so many signals around us. And what are we doing about it?

Anders Hansen takes us down the path of long evolution, in which we are merely the last few dots in a vast sequence of 1,500 generations through which human development has passed. Hundreds of generations lived quietly and calmly, with barely any information about what was happening beyond a radius of a few dozen kilometers. They knew their few neighbors, they had serious but rarely changing basic stimuli…

Until suddenly we find ourselves in a world where information bombards us. Our “friends” number in the hundreds of thousands, and the battle for our attention is fierce.

And a clear parallel emerges. Once, in evolutionary terms, it was important to try to eat as much as possible, to stock up, to devour as much food as you could. Today, in most of the world, food is abundant, and suddenly it turns out that the hard part is holding back. Without noticing, we have to reverse the goals of several thousand years of evolution, and for now we do not seem to be doing particularly well.

Exactly the same thing is happening with information. Only far more fundamentally. And far more dangerously than even the health problems that come as a natural consequence of obesity.

2. Don't… Like!

“Justin Rosenstein, an American in his thirties, decided to limit his use of Facebook and abandoned Snapchat altogether, comparing it to heroin in terms of its ability to create addiction. To cut down on his phone use, he installed an app designed so that parents can limit their children's mobile habits.

Rosenstein's move is particularly interesting given that he is the one who created the ‘like’ button on Facebook. In other words, the man behind the ‘like’ believes his own creation is too tempting, and in one interview he gives the impression that he almost regrets it: ‘It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.’”

We do not know where we have ended up. While the next technologies loom, artificial intelligence is here to rebuild from the ground up the foundations of everything that makes us human… while we still cannot figure out where we have ended up.

“Like.” I “like” things too. Is it bad to “like”? Not at all, just as it is not bad to like, without the quotation marks. Only the likes, those tiny gestures of approval (or outrage, or laughter), turned out to be much more than a tiny gesture. They are a convenient tool of manipulation, negligible in scale but enormous in power. On the one hand it breeds addiction, manipulating us at the most obvious level, that of our hormones, so that we rejoice, lie in wait, keep watching. On the other hand it deprives us of real conversation.

I don't know about you, but I don't like it, and I don't “like” it either.

3. One Thing at a Time!

“People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves!”
Earl Miller, professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Our brain has the incredible ability to run many processes in parallel, but in one particular area our mental capacity is extremely limited: attention. We simply can focus on only one thing at a time. What we actually do when we think we are multitasking is switch rapidly from one task to another and back again.

When you are listening to a lecture and writing an email at the same time, impressed by your ability to do both at once, the truth is that you are instantly shifting your attention from one to the other. The switch itself takes only a tenth of a second, but the problem is that your brain lingers on what you were doing before. When you move to the email, it will still be devoting some attention to the person giving the lecture. The same happens when you leave the email for the lecture.”

We cannot multitask. This comes from someone who multitasks constantly and will hardly manage to stop. Our brain is built in a way that needs time, calm, context. Yet in digital times, time turns out to be a resource draining away at lightning speed, and we keep piling up and piling up tasks, reasons to think, to remember, to react… which is simply not the human way of coping.

Our brain can work on many tasks in parallel. And yet it has the limitation of holding our concentration on just one. And as long as we try to change that, we will lose more and more time, forgetting the next details, the next tasks.

4. Remember!

“The ‘Google effect,’ also known as ‘digital amnesia,’ is when our brain decides not to learn something it believes is already stored somewhere. For the brain, it is more important to remember where it can find the information than the information itself. But the Google effect doesn't just stop us from remembering facts. In one experiment, participants were asked to visit an art museum, photographing some works and only looking at others. The next day they were shown pictures of several works, some of which they had seen in the museum and some of which they had not. They had to try to remember whether they had come across the works in the pictures during their visit.

It turned out that they found it easier to recall the works they had not photographed than the ones they had. Just as our brain decides not to learn sentences stored on a computer, it seems it also doesn't want to remember something that has been photographed. Instead it takes a shortcut: ‘Why remember the artwork itself when it's in a photo?’”

“I am young, but I remember no youth,” wrote Hristo Botev, the nineteenth-century revolutionary poet. We keep delegating, delegating the next important things to technology. I have written here about photographs that change their meaning, about memory and oblivion, about the ease with which we hand over our memories, and about the complete change in the way we get our information, which is so directly tied to our memories too.

And yet all this looks even more thought-provoking when seen through the eyes of a psychiatrist who also speaks from experience.

Memory matters. Partly because “who controls the past controls the future.”

And partly because it is one of the main traits that make us human. Traits that should lead us forward.

5. Think Three Times, Post Once!

“You are hardly the only one who has ever written something on Facebook and later realized you shared more than you intended. Not only do we communicate with more people through social media, we also share more about ourselves, because we don't see the people we are talking to. According to numerous studies, we readily reveal details about ourselves online that would otherwise seem too personal to share face to face. This is probably because when we stand in front of someone and can see their facial expression and body language, we hold back: ‘Oh, he looks a little skeptical, I'd better not say any more.’ Without the possibility of feedback, self-censorship disappears. That is why we can easily share something personal with three hundred people on Facebook, but not with three people in real life.

In a study involving nearly two thousand Americans, it turned out that those who were more active on social media felt lonelier. Whether they actually were lonelier is another matter. As we know, loneliness cannot be measured by the number of friends, messages or calls—it is a matter of feeling. And it seems this is exactly what the participants in the study felt.”

Dr. Hansen also describes experiments suggesting that a person, however hard they try, can build some meaningful connection with no more than 150 people at a time. Beyond that, the limit is simply set by the constraints of our brain, which we never stop challenging with each new technological provocation. There is no way to have 5,000 “friends,” know who they are and maintain a full relationship with each of them.

Digital inequality arrived there, in the online world that supposedly appeared to give all of us equal access to information. And indeed, each of us has incredible access to information. But did we turn out to be ready?

Our limitations can become an advantage too, can't they? Only for that to happen, we need to approach them more consciously.

All while it is so easy, so pleasant, so important to speak out online on every new big issue!

“The false feeling that your opinion matters,” as one remarkable guest of Digital Stories so aptly put it.

6. You Are the Product!

“The global advertising market brings in over 400 billion euros a year, and it has moved from newspapers, television sets and billboards to our mobile phones at lightning speed. This is not at all surprising, given how our brain works.

Digital marketers take advantage of all this. They know that your attention is glued to a device that supplies your brain with hundreds of small doses of dopamine every day, and that your thirst for information about the people around you means your brain is always ready to store new facts. They also know it will form positive associations—both consciously and unconsciously—with the message they want to convey to you. They achieve this by placing ads strategically within the stream of digital information you are flooded with.”

You are what you read.

Let me say it again, just in case, since we all read in a hurry and have no time to go deep.

You are what you read.

You close the ad before the video and that's it, you are free of the manipulation. Not at all—it is only just beginning.

We leave enormous, continuous and entirely voluntary ultra-detailed electronic dossiers of ourselves on the web. The algorithms are ever more perfect at the task of reading, recognizing, interpreting and using them.

At the same time, we find ourselves spending hours of our lives every day online on platforms that are free. Exactly as free as the cheese in a mousetrap.

Online, the product is you.

7. Grab Your Swimsuit!

“An information tsunami! Every day, 2.5 trillion units of information are created. One trillion equals a billion billion! Such a large number is unimaginable, but perhaps it would be easier to grasp if we consider that every single minute 187 million emails and 38 million messages are sent. In the same time, 400 hours of footage are uploaded to YouTube, 3.7 million Google searches are made, half a million tweets are posted, and a million photos on Tinder are swiped right or left. And this is happening faster and faster with each passing day. But the brain that has to absorb this tsunami of digital information is the same as it was ten thousand years ago.

To cope with this tsunami, we need to suppress the impulse to reach for our phones every minute and to click on links that take us away from the articles we are reading.”

I won't reach for my phone. I won't reach for my phone. I won't reach for my phone… But what if it's something important?

8. Think!

“The fact that each successive generation has a higher IQ is known as the ‘Flynn effect,’ after the New Zealand professor James Flynn. But it is not due to digitalization alone: roughly the same rise in IQ has been observed every decade since the 1920s, and back then there was neither television nor the internet.

Since the late 1990s, however, Flynn has noticed a worrying pattern: this growth has slowed in the Scandinavian countries, and the average IQ is falling every year. The decline is not that dramatic—0.2 points a year—but within a single generation it can reach 6 to 7 points. That would be by no means an insignificant figure. Flynn assumes the same will happen to the rest of the world.”

This is a topic on which many Digital Stories are still to come. Intelligence is an important criterion that changes and is easily redefined. You may not remember, but the most intelligent woman on the planet has been a guest here too!

Or perhaps it is connected with our development as a species, with happiness, even with reproduction?

And yet, by all appearances… progress in technology does not necessarily make us more intelligent. And then comes artificial intelligence, while we have less and less of the natural kind left to oppose it, balance it and make sense of it… this topic is too important; expect more essential strokes on it soon.

9. Wait a Minute!

“Digitalization is outpacing research into its effects. If you want to learn about the findings on the impact of today's digital lifestyle, you will have to wait a few years. By then, of course, technology will have developed even further, and unless the trend of the past twenty years changes sharply, we will be using phones and computers even more often. And if you want to find out how the digital lifestyle of 2023 has affected us, you will have to wait until 2027.”

Anton Donchev told me this a full 15 years ago. We carry in our pocket a device and we do not know where it will take us. We carry in our pocket an entire Universe, a volume of information that a generation back no one would have imagined could be taken in.

5G didn't kill the pigeons, the waves from cell towers didn't wipe us out, even the vaccines with chips didn't manage it. And yet technology has changed us drastically, imperceptibly, perfidiously, fundamentally. While there was never time to sit down and make sense of it, talk it over, show what had happened. And what next?

10. Protect the Child!

“The journal Pediatrics warns that children who spend too much time in front of tablets and phones instead of playing fail to acquire important motor skills they need in order to later learn mathematics and the theoretical sciences.

The American Academy of Pediatrics urges limiting children's access to tablets and phones, especially if they are under 18 months old. To me, the phrase ‘under 18 months’ sounded absurd, since children that age can't even talk properly, and some can barely walk! But I quickly realized the recommendation is not ridiculous at all, given that 80% of two-year-olds actually use the internet regularly.”

Soon we will talk in detail, in a series of articles, about the huge topic of children and technology; look for it in January.

Meanwhile, when it comes to technology, we are all children. “We are all children of Mother Earth,” wrote Hristo Smirnenski, the Bulgarian poet of the 1920s. And we are in the role of children who must quickly come to their senses and grow up. Not give in to the shiny toys. To the deceptive convenience, to the fast carbohydrates.

Technology, and the way we embrace it, deserves a far more serious and thoughtful conversation.

If you don't believe me, you can see for yourself in the book Insta-Brain, where you will also find useful advice on how to limit the damage, how to preserve your brain, your calm, your balance—practical and tested.

Online, you are what you read. Don't stop reading. But don't stop stopping while you read, either. So that you can think…

If you have never heard of “social engineering,” or “social engineerism,” as today’s guest says we ought to call it, you are probably picturing a plot straight out of Frankenstein: the engineer builds himself a person… Or something from the conspiracy theories about mass mind control.

Whether you have heard of it or not, though, we need to talk about it more and more. Because this is the most dangerous and most effective attack in the digital world. One that targets not computers, networks, servers or programs, but the weakest link in the chain: the human being.

“Today cybersecurity breaches happen more and more often through social engineering, a method that uses manipulation and manipulative techniques so that people are deceived and access to sensitive information is gained,” says cybersecurity specialist Plamen Tsvetanov.

But what are the most important steps to protect ourselves? What are the biggest risks of underestimating the person on the other side? Why should trust online be a scarce commodity? The subject matters to everyone, even those who don’t realize it…

Social, Eng.

Our guest definitely knows what he is talking about; the subject has fascinated him for decades. More than 20 years ago Plamen Tsvetanov began publishing the cult magazine Hacker, which, as its cover put it, told stories “about the dark side of things.” The magazine itself has a fascinating history that deserves to be told separately. But it was there, back in the first years of the millennium, that Plamen wrote about social engineering—the cyberattack aimed not at technology but at the user. That is why the experience he is about to share matters…, experience that comes from both sides of the barricade.

“People are often the weak link in cybersecurity,” says today’s guest. “For example, they can be tricked into sharing passwords or personal information through fake emails, social networks or phone calls. To protect yourself from such attacks, it is important to be careful and always check and verify the identity of anyone who asks for sensitive information.”

“Social engineering is the form used in more than 80 percent of cyberattacks, according to statistics from the FBI and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity. It is a beachhead for other, even more dangerous breaches, but it is also an attack of the purest and most frightening kind in its own right.”

Hack or Be Hacked

Naturally, I couldn’t resist asking Plamen whether he had ever fallen victim to something like this himself. It turns out he hadn’t, but… it happened to his father.

“He worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and for more than 30 years taught Operational Investigative Activity; he was one of the greatest criminologists and profilers. And… he lost a huge sum after an attack like this,” Plamen says. Here is a more than certain sign that nobody is immune and everyone would do well to stay on guard online.

In the case of our guest’s father, the method was pretexting. This type of social engineering requires thorough research and careful preparation. The attacker gets to know the victim, starts communicating with them and manages to persuade them to share information they should never share under any circumstances.

“It’s a variation on the phone scams that used to be so popular,” Plamen adds. “Most often it was a call from someone posing as a medical worker in an emergency room, who would convince people to ‘save’ a supposedly injured loved one in need of urgent surgery.”

So, if… a criminologist with 30 years of experience can fall for it, do you really think anyone can be safe?

Serves You Right

Social engineering can turn up in many unexpected forms and situations. Some of them include:

• Physical social engineering

For example, someone posing as a worker from a service provider or technical support in order to gain access to a building or a computer system.

• Exploiting public events

The attacker may play the role of a participant at a charity event or a conference in order to gather information from the people attending.

• Fake social media campaigns

Attackers can create fake profiles, sometimes copying real ones, to get close to their targets by posing as friends or colleagues.

• Physical gifts or baiting

They can use gifts such as flash drives or other devices loaded with malware.

• Fake customer support

Attackers can pose as company employees to collect information from users through phone calls or emails.

Of course, these examples are only illustrative, insofar as there are no boundaries. Today’s web offers so many opportunities for attacks of this kind, limited only by the imagination of the “social engineers.”

Likes for Everyone, Trust for No One

“Unfortunately, a huge number of people and businesses think that things like this can’t happen ‘to us’!” Plamen sums up.

And while we began with phone scams, whose potential victims were mostly older people, nobody is immune to social engineering and its countless forms:

• Ordinary users

Anyone who uses the internet and social networks can be a target of social engineering. For example, people can be tricked into clicking harmful links or sharing sensitive information as a result of fake emails or messages on social networks.

• Businesses and organizations

Corporations, small businesses and other organizations are vulnerable to social engineering too. Attacks such as phishing and business fraud can do serious damage, exposing sensitive information or causing direct financial losses.

• Public figures, celebrities, influencers

People with a significant public presence are an even more “valuable” victim of social engineering.

• Employees

Social engineering can be used to manipulate an organization’s employees into revealing sensitive information or taking actions that could harm their workplace.

Heroes of Our Time

And if technology is constantly changing, the same goes for the attacks. As mentioned, Plamen Tsvetanov has been following the subject for more than two decades, and here are some of the things that have changed over that time:

• The growth of the online social landscape

Social networks and online platforms are now an inseparable part of our daily lives. This opens up new opportunities for social engineering, such as fake news, disinformation and manipulation through social media.

• The development of artificial intelligence and deepfakes

With technological progress, it is easier than ever to create realistic fake video and audio to be used for manipulation and fraud.

• More targeted attacks and personalized manipulation

Social engineering attacks are often more personalized. Malicious actors use data about people’s behavior and preferences to craft manipulative messages that are more likely to hit their mark.

• Wider awareness, cybersecurity training and education

On the other hand, as social engineering evolves, there is also more attention paid to cybersecurity, more training and more awareness of the subject. Organizations and individuals increasingly recognize the risks and strive to understand them and protect themselves from potential attacks.

In the end, that is exactly why we are here: to help more people stop and think the next time they get an email, a message, or read a news story that looks completely genuine. At least at first glance…

Once Hacked, Twice Shy

So what matters most if we want to protect ourselves? Forgive me for repeating myself…, being cautious. Or, as Plamen puts it, better to blow on the porridge before we get burned, since after that, as the Bulgarian proverb about the scalded man goes, we will be blowing on it anyway.

As for companies, the only solution is a combination of many factors—awareness, security procedures, technological solutions. And since employees don’t always pay attention to rather dull videos or live training sessions, regular tests and simulations are a must. Because reading abstract reflections is one thing, and quite another is to be fooled into clicking a convincing-looking link in a work email…, only to find out it was sent by the cybersecurity specialists, who have just managed to show you that anyone can be fooled.

And while these aspects of social engineering get plenty of discussion, one point of view remains relatively sidelined: that social engineering is also… the way the social platforms themselves treat us. Their algorithms, which lock us inside filter bubbles, and their marketing approaches. Even the way they shape the public agenda today is, definitely and categorically, a form of social engineering too, the cybersecurity specialist agrees.

And all of this will only deepen, thanks in part to generative technologies. As the Digital Stories experiment showed, it now takes just minutes and minimal technical knowledge to generate an online “hero” invented entirely by algorithms. And from there, the road to that hero becoming a weapon of social engineering is a short one…

Keep It in Mind

“There is no way we can say that every form of social engineering has already been invented,” Plamen says. “These kinds of attacks and manipulation constantly evolve and adapt to new technologies, to the social and cultural context, to changes in people’s behavior. Advances in technology, especially in artificial intelligence and social networks, may open up new opportunities for manipulation and attacks.”

And one more thing: social engineering is not limited to the digital world. “It can also be carried out in real life, using psychological techniques and manipulation,” the specialist sums up. “It is important to realize that social engineering is a product of human creativity and manipulative skill. That is why we must stay constantly vigilant, develop critical thinking and stay informed about the potential threats we may encounter both online and offline.”

Before we part, Plamen says something he considers an unwritten law, and all I can do is sign up to it. “Trust should not exist on the internet! Better to be paranoid than to get burned.” (You can find more about our guest and his work here.

Well, I sincerely hope that with Digital Stories I have managed to earn your trust in my attempts to gather important pieces of information, stories that help us find our way through the bustle of the technological present. But if you ever happen to see me advertising casinos, cryptocurrencies or someone to vote for… yes, online originals can almost always be told apart from fakes. All it takes, though, is the most important and perhaps the scarcest quality of our day. Common sense…

Wondering whether it's worth giving programming a try? I'll do my best to answer. This Digital Story is not like the others. If you already have experience in the field, or if it simply doesn't interest you, don't waste your time on the lines that follow. They are for people who wonder whether this so very promising (and cool!) profession might be worth a shot.

The IT sector is booming, especially against the backdrop of our economy as a whole. It stands out not only for the incomes it provides, but also for its working conditions, the enormous demand, the environment it creates. For the chance to work on projects of global significance. Yes, it sometimes struggles to “talk” to the rest of society. And still, it is a magnetic place for a future career.

I decided to become a programmer at 33, when I already had serious experience in another profession. There are so many things I would have loved for someone to tell me at the moment I made the decision to switch. Those are exactly the things I'll try to gather here.

Is it worth trying this profession? Is programming for you? What knowledge and skills do you need to get started? When is it too late? What are the key decisions you have to make at the beginning? How do you choose a programming language? Where should you learn it? How do you find your first job? What other professions in this field could you aim for?

I'll give you my personal, honest answers. And I'll be endlessly happy if they prove useful to even a single reader who then dares to take the big step…

I make no claim to absolute truth. Everything I'm about to share is my experience so far, and through it I'll try to give my answers. Many of them surely depend on the point of view of whoever you happen to ask.

Is programming for me?

To be frank, the most important reason I wrote this piece is the answer to exactly this question. And it's the only one I'm completely and unconditionally sure about:

There's no way to know unless you try.

I'm telling you this as someone who has spent his whole life in journalism and has been driven by humanities-minded passions. Someone who, until a fairly advanced age, kept well away from mathematics—and mathematics kept well away from him. I first touched program code at 33, and at 34 I started my first job as a programmer, after 14 years in a completely different field.

And speaking of math… Yes, really, counterintuitive as it sounds, you can work successfully in this field without knowing more of it than a fifth-grader. Of course, there are specific projects where it matters, areas of programming where there's no way around it. But it is far from mandatory, or even necessary, for the vast majority of positions.

Unlike two other things, which are not fields of knowledge but qualities. The first is the desire to keep learning new things, over and over, which is essential in a world as dynamic as that of information technology.

And besides that—logical thinking, the ability to get to the heart of problems, break them into smaller ones and solve them.

And here's the paradox: it turns out that it's not math but languages that are indispensable. Because everything in this field happens in English, and you need to have a good command of it to start. Of course, nobody expects you to have read all of Shakespeare in the original, or to know the terminology of the field; it's enough to be able to communicate and read with comprehension at a basic level.

I know quite a few architects and lawyers who have switched to this profession, even a tennis instructor and a musician. People who saw computer code for the first time when they were over 50. I've heard of a former airline pilot, doctors, former police officers.

How do you find out whether it's for you? The only way is to try. There are plenty of introductory, basic courses online whose whole point is to show you what programming is. That's how my own adventure began—with the one-month basic course at SoftUni, a large Bulgarian private programming school—and you can find similar initiatives in many places.

How do I start?

So you've decided to give software engineering a try? Congratulations. I haven't been practicing it for all that long (my experience is about 4 years), but I genuinely love it.

Truly, to avoid disappointment, we definitely recommend setting aside some time for a few beginner courses to check whether this is for you. It's also important to end up with someone who will light a fire in you, as with any other new knowledge. So if things don't take off, consider whether the problem might be the teacher, the course, the teaching style or something else.

But once you're convinced it's interesting, there are many paths. They depend mostly on how much time you can spare and how you learn best. Many software professionals who have walked my path will tell you that a university degree in this field isn't necessary, that everything you need can be learned through courses. And that is true, but only partly. If you want to feel at ease and progress faster through unfamiliar material, if you want a broader foundation to build on, a degree in this direction is certainly a treasure (especially from a good enough university).

Only… alas, not everyone can afford 4 years of study. From here on, academies are a wonderful solution.

How long will it take me?

My path began at SoftUni, which offers 4 main tracks for programmers, depending on the technology they'll work with (we'll get to the differences between them). Either way, the tracks take a year and a half on average, after which you can say you have a profession and enough knowledge to get started.

At Telerik Academy, another well-known Bulgarian school, for example, the tracks are much more intensive, some lasting only 6 months. You'll learn a lot in less time; they're a wonderful solution, but only if you can afford to devote your time solely and entirely to studying. Which, at least in my experience, isn't required at SoftUni, since I got through the online courses while working as a journalist at the same time, with a newborn baby in my arms.

There are more and more other academies offering a head start, too. It's certainly worth researching them well, asking friends and getting a feel for which one is yours. Or simply improvising.

If the lack of a diploma worries you, quite a few academies are now licensed as vocational training centers, so their certificates carry a fully formal, official weight as well.

There are probably people who are completely self-taught and prepared only with online courses, but I, at least, have yet to meet such a programmer. Yes, online videos are an extremely valuable way to get into a particular technology quickly, but for the very beginning and the fundamentals they don't strike me as a good idea.

Academy courses, if done right, give you the knowledge you need to find your first job. Of course, that's not the end of learning. I, for one, felt quite uneasy finding myself in a new field with so little basic knowledge, and over the following years I “put myself through” more than 30 additional courses at the same software school, including in areas where the knowledge was completely useless to me.

Be ready to keep learning even after you've found your first job. At that point, video lessons on the big platforms can turn out to be a useful and sufficient resource. With all the caveats, depending on which direction you plan to take.

What do I need to know beforehand?

Oh, this will be a pretty short answer. Only that you shouldn't give up easily. Every form of training I've mentioned is designed to take in someone starting truly from zero.

Which programming language should I choose?

Many people spend quite a lot of time choosing the specific technology they'll learn. There's sense in that, but it isn't all that important either, since the basic knowledge from the first courses overlaps to a very large extent, especially among the most widespread options.

Either way, choosing a programming language is a must—you have to start with something. A classic choice, especially if you want to learn faster, is certainly one of the 5 most widespread languages on the Bulgarian market today: JavaScript, C#, Java, Python and PHP. Whichever you choose, you won't go wrong; it's no accident that they are the most widely represented in the programs academies offer. Any of them is a proven good idea, because the path is well-trodden, the schools have serious experience with them and the demand is long-term. They all come from a common family—the languages based on C—so they are quite similar in logic and even in appearance.

We're lucky to work in an era of programming languages so readable that we practically “speak” English to the computer, compared with the solutions of decades ago, which were truly unkind to programmers.

Of course, it's no mistake to settle on a less common option, such as the tried-and-true C and C++, or newer ones like Go or Swift. It's quite likely to pay off, but they certainly demand a bit more effort and specialized courses.

Either way, it's good to make sure the language you choose is in sufficient demand. A good approach, in my view, is to look at the job board on dev.bg.

If you're still undecided, you can always find an online resource comparing the main pros and cons of the languages. It also matters whether you've already set your sights on the specific area you dream of working in. If, for instance, you want to build web pages—the complex applications that websites are today—the logical choice is JavaScript. That points you toward the profession of a front-end specialist. If you're drawn more to the world of artificial intelligence, then Python is the obvious choice.

It's also wonderful if you can somehow steer toward an area where you have a personal interest or previous experience, even if it has nothing to do with software itself—things work out best when work meets pleasure.

I, for example, chose front-end technologies for two reasons. On the one hand, it was the shortest learning track, and I couldn't afford anything else. On the other, I like that in front-end development you create something you can see. Something that, logically, is quite similar to what gets created on paper.

How should I learn?

Let me say again that my experience comes from SoftUni; at universities things are generally classic, whether it's software engineering or any other discipline.

After COVID, some academies brought back in-person options, while others remain entirely online. For me personally, online learning had many advantages, because I could watch the video lessons at a convenient time in the evening, speed up the parts that were clear to me and replay the ones I didn't understand.

For many people, though, the value lies in personal contact, the chance to interrupt the lecturer at any moment to ask about something unclear, to seek help. There's no right answer here either, but it's worth thinking about which option suits you.

Programming is an extremely applied field, yet it requires quite a bit of basic knowledge before you start. Still, don't let that mislead you into thinking that learning will consist of listening to lectures and cramming. Nothing of the sort! At every moment, every new piece of knowledge should pass through practice. Trying and repeating what you're shown, solving the exercises. Sometimes a competitive element with others in your course gives extra motivation.

It's your knowledge and skills that matter, and those are exactly what the people hiring you for your first job will assess. Certificates are by no means the most important thing, but exams are a nice opportunity to motivate yourself and prepare. And you never know when a successfully passed exam might come in handy.

Will I find a job easily?

As long as you're doing well—absolutely! The demand is huge and keeps growing; the sector needs programmers. Yes, people with more experience are certainly better paid and more courted, but there are only so many of them—first, because the market is growing. And second, because of the nature of the profession: in the natural course of development, after a few years of programming people often move on to next steps, becoming managers or architects, for example.

So companies, especially the more far-sighted ones, are always open to interns or junior specialists, popularly known as juniors.

Almost all software academies make a practice of steering their most successful students toward specific companies. Quite a few companies also run some kind of school of their own.

Either way, two things matter when it comes to landing your first job: self-confidence and… something to back that self-confidence up.

It's good to have at least some study projects to show, and to polish your CV so it looks good, even though it lists no experience in this particular field.

When you go to an interview for your first job, nobody expects you to have the knowledge and skills of an experienced specialist. But it's important to be prepared and to have something to show. Job boards regularly post entry-level positions too. Many people don't even wait for the end of their training before starting a real job, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And once you find a good first position, once you land in the right place… from there on it's easy. The work will draw you in, and the demand for experienced people means that a capable specialist really can choose among good offers.

Programming, or…?

The IT sector in Bulgaria is still developing and expanding at an incredible pace; we can all see it. And programming is far from the only career option.

If, for instance, you don't have enough time for longer preparation—you need to find a job faster—or if computer code itself hasn't seemed all that tempting, a sensible option is a career among the specialists who test software products. QA stands for Quality Assurance and covers some quite interesting directions—everything to do with guaranteeing that a software product works as expected.

One side of it is so-called manual testing, where the QA specialist takes on the role of a user and hunts for bugs in how the application works. That is a suitable entry-level role, one you'll be ready for after much shorter courses. And afterward you can always move further, for example toward automated testing, which does require programming.

Of course, alongside all this there are many professions that have nothing to do with code. If your strength is organizing people or mediating, you can aim for roles like product manager or Scrum master—they don't necessarily require programming knowledge.

Hello, world!

So, I hope I haven't been preachy, but rather useful with ideas. Many of the answers I've given, as you can see for yourselves, are subjective; you'll hear quite different ones from people with more, or different, experience in the industry.

My goal is something else—besides giving you a modest initial bearing, to convince you that if programming captivates you as an occupation, it's worth carrying on. Because you'll give yourself a new and fascinating world that can only extend the road you've traveled so far. For me, for instance, programming was also the road back to journalism, with this site. Where I write about technology, but now firsthand and with the experience of someone from the “humanities world”…

Every programming course begins with the famous sentence “Hello, world!” I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a new world opens up for you too in software engineering. And if it does, I'll be glad if you write to me afterward to share your success, so we can tell your Digital Story together!

Until then, if I can be of help with further answers, I'm entirely at your service. Write to me at me@karamanev.me

I'll soon tell the story of how I turned to programming at the online event Career show.

I'll be glad to talk on November 30 (Wednesday) from 9 a.m.

The information technology sector has been more than attractive for career development in recent years. But can anyone become a programmer? Is it ever too late to turn to this profession? What qualities and skills do you need to succeed? When can knowledge from the IT world prove useful in any other field?

The event is free, but requires prior registration.

More information here.

– Hristina, as someone with experience and serious knowledge of the subject, what do you do to protect your personal data online?

– Most of my Facebook posts are visible only to my friends. I choose complex passwords, guard them carefully, don't give other apps access to my social media profiles, and use two-factor authentication. I shop carefully and don't open emails when I don't know where they come from.

Honestly, it doesn't bother me to click Agree on a cookie banner and let marketing cookies target me.

Behind them is a business that I've obviously chosen as trustworthy, since I'm on its website.

– We've all had our eyes glaze over at GDPR and cookies. What's your impression—has this regulation done its job?

– At the beginning of the regulation there are three points that define its scope and objectives. If we have to analyze whether they've been achieved, I'd say yes. But if we're looking for an answer to the question of

whether users and their data are protected online, then the answer is no.

– What is our most important personal data?

– Good question. Everyone probably has their own answer, depending on their values and priorities. For me, the most important is data about my finances, my location, the people I communicate with every day and, accordingly, the content of our communication.

In reality, I don't think it matters which data we consider most important, but whether someone else can link us to particular personal data. My Facebook username and password aren't especially important on their own, but if someone can find both and connect them, then I'll have a problem.

– What kinds of misuse should frighten us?

– Personally, any misuse frightens me. I'm demanding when it comes to my personal space and don't want it violated in any way. Most misuse, though, aims at financial gain for the perpetrator. That's why I guard my bank cards most jealously.

– Is it normal for every small website we've visited once to be subject to the same oversight as the giants?

– From a business point of view, it's a burden. From the legislator's point of view, targeted rules are hard to introduce. It's not impossible, but the EU probably judged that it wasn't practical when it comes to the rules on cookies. Perhaps I should mention here that cookies are actually regulated not by GDPR but by the e-Privacy Directive. And GDPR actually does a good job of separating small businesses from big ones. The rules on appointing a data protection officer take this into account, and the penalties are set as a percentage.

– In your view, as a lawyer, do people actually read what they agree to?

– No! But that's a problem with people, not with the law.

– So what's the solution?

– To try to raise smarter children. It sounds arrogant and conceited, but I absolutely believe it's the only possible solution to most of the problems we have as a society.

I don't think it's the right approach to spare people the reading,

after all, as you rightly point out, we're not talking about several pages of terms and conditions here, but a few lines of text.

– Is it really worth reading what cookies a website wants from us?

– Everything is worth reading, especially if we read it critically.

– Every new regulation in these areas comes with the promise of huge penalties, and then they seem to vanish. Is it something like that with GDPR too?

– Actually, there are examples of quite high penalties. They just aren't in Bulgaria. Here you can see the largest ones imposed so far—50 million euros for Google, 35 million for H&M.

Every rule is backed by some sanction, some kind of punishment. The fact that they're in the law doesn't mean the legislator's goal is to impose them.

It's simply that the easiest way to govern the masses is through fear.

People protect their wealth; for them it's a means of taking care of their families. Besides, fear-related news gets the most views, so it's no accident that this particular aspect of the regulation was publicized the most.

– 50 million for Google… And yet, why aren't penalties imposed in Bulgaria for personal data violations?

– Maybe we follow the rules?! I'm joking.

It's hard for me to answer that question, because it'll sound like criticism of my colleagues at the Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP), Bulgaria's data protection authority, but I know some of them personally and I know they're capable professionals. Perhaps incompetence is sometimes not a trait of an individual but of the system. A lack of resources, of qualified staff. It's true that a large share of the CPDP's proceedings concern video surveillance, and the fines imposed for 2021 came to a modest 319,000 leva (about $165,000).

– Today, some of the big questions on the subject are undoubtedly tied to the way the online giants manage and use our data. Jaron Lanier, for example, has an interesting perspective: he reminds us that if something is free, you are the product. Can the giants really be controlled?

– When it comes to controlling Facebook, I prefer to think about how I could counter the status quo rather than how to change it—when that's the more effective solution, of course. In this case, I personally bet on critical thinking. When I read something, I don't take it at face value, and I'm teaching my seven-year-old daughter the same (even though she can't read well yet).

But we all forgot about Cambridge Analytica very quickly. If I set aside my personal perspective and accept that

there's no way everyone can be taught not to believe what they read online,

I start to fear for the future of the world. And yet, even before social networks, there was social engineering and there were campaigns that determined the course of elections—as far back as the 1950s, leaders were chosen on the strength of propaganda.

– Even so, is there a way for such big companies to be regulated?

– I'm not sure it would be helpful to impose strict control. And where does that leave freedom of speech?

– Not long ago I heard the sensible argument that this would rather be censorship of censorship.

Does copyright matter online today? It seems that back when creators sold their content offline, people paid more attention to it…

– It matters, but it's harder to protect. If we turn to the principle that demand determines supply: if we were all conscientious and wanted to support the musicians, writers, directors and actors we like so much by buying their products, would there be so many pirate platforms?

I was maybe 12 when my father explained to me that he bought CDs by his favorite artists to contribute to the well-being of the people who had created them. I learned a lot from that.

– What trouble can we get into if we decide to use someone else's photo?

– If we misuse someone's copyright, we'll be committing a violation under the Copyright Act and will have to pay the author a fee. If we decide to use someone else's personal photo, that may amount to damages under the Obligations and Contracts Act, and we may owe compensation. All of this assuming someone can be bothered to go to court.

– Do these rules blur in times when no one can keep track of everything shared on social networks?

– Of course, the scale of social networks makes tracking very difficult. But I wouldn't say the rules are blurring; they are what they are. They just aren't enforced.

– Can someone be sued over an opinion on the internet?

– They can be sued for defamation. Regardless of whether it was spread through the internet or some other way. The web is just a medium. We, the people, are what matters.

– If we encounter hatred and abuse online, how can we stand up for our rights?

– Several nongovernmental organizations have developed projects on hate speech. Here are a few links.

But, as with any other crime, anyone can write a report to the pretrial authorities—the prosecutor's office—and it will have a legal basis to open an investigation. The report must be signed, an electronic signature will do, but the important thing is that it can't be anonymous.

On the one hand, this is limiting for victims, because they're often hesitant to stand up for their rights; on the other, when you claim someone has committed a crime, it's right that you put your name to it, otherwise you leave room for abuse.

– Like many other fields, does the law need to change very seriously to keep up with the times?

– It doesn't need to change very seriously. But

it does need to reflect social reality, as we're taught in the first year of law school.

In other countries that happens faster than it does here.

– In what direction should these changes go?

– I think GDPR is a good example. The problem we have with this act in Bulgaria stems from its nature, not its content. Here we're used to opening a law and finding written in it, “When person X performs action Y, such-and-such must happen.” I don't think that's right; it's an approach that tries to combat the pervasive incompetence of the Bulgarian administration. GDPR, by contrast, expects you to have common sense: it gives you a framework, and you have to judge what to do and bear responsibility for your actions.

When did you last meet someone who takes responsibility for what they do?

It happens to me less and less.

– What could bring the law closer to people, who after all deal with it every day, yet today see it as scholasticism, as long and incomprehensible explanations?

– Education. Secondary education. My ethics and law classes in high school were a waste of time. They tested us on where the treaties founding the EU were signed;

no one thought to hand each of us a copy of the constitution and tell us about the basic principles

that our legal system rests on.

– Algorithms are already creating art. Is there a legal logic to who the author of that art actually is?

– There is—whoever owns the robot owns the result. I understand the moral dilemma about the value of the idea at the heart of the final work, but in the case of DALL-E there's no particular legal complexity.

– Why do you think law is still the most sought-after major at many universities, including Sofia University?

– Is it really still the most sought-after major? Apart from the blame lying with parents born in the 1970s who still live with the conviction that a law degree is elite, no other reason comes to mind.

– And so we arrive here. As someone who has walked a similar path, albeit in a different field… The law is clearly a soft spot for you; you've devoted a lot of time and effort to it, but then you switch to a completely different career. Why?

– Twelve years, dozens of exams and a dissertation several hundred pages long. It was a painful breakup. Because I wasn't paid well. Because I was terribly bored sitting behind a computer; I needed to communicate with people. Because I didn't see the point in what I was doing.

– So it disappointed you?

– It disappointed me, yes. When you study for so long, you think it will pay off economically. I naively believed my pay would be proportional to the effort I'd put in. Well, it wasn't. And I was among the well-paid lawyers; I have colleagues who started as civil servants on about 700 leva a month. That's what my rent is. And my time is far more valuable, especially when I put my daughter on the scales.

– I understand you very well.

In recent years we've talked so much about judicial reform; this system keeps getting reformed, and it keeps being incomprehensible, distant and ineffective for a huge part of society. Why do you think that is?

– Seven years ago I wanted to become a judge. I clearly remember going to the exams for magistrates. I hadn't prepared, because I had a small baby; I just wanted to see how the exam went so I could sit it the following year.

I was sitting in the hall at Sofia University, worrying that I'd left my child. They handed out the cases. That's what the exam consists of—solving a realistic case. Even though I hadn't prepared, over the years I'd solved quite a few of them and knew the finer points. At that moment, though, I saw the situation more realistically, and when I realized I couldn't solve the case because it was based on interpretive rulings of the Supreme Court of Cassation, Bulgaria's highest court for civil and criminal cases, I started to think.

We are a continental legal system. The law ought to carry the main weight for the court, but at the same time the interpretive practice of the Supreme Court (much like precedent) matters a great deal to a judge.

I'm a freshly graduated student; I haven't practiced. The internships during your studies are a formality and pointless.

I'm sitting in the big hall, and they're asking me not what I think, but what a Supreme Court judge thinks.

The exam isn't designed to sift out intelligent people, but to find the people who know the status quo. So what change are we expecting? After all, reform is made by people…

We see the question in the headline every single day. But how should we answer it? Which cookies should we accept and which not? Does our decision matter, and can we change it? And what are these notorious cookies anyway?

Every website today looks like this: you open it, the cookie window pops up, you start reading, you rather enjoy the prose, and by the time you've decided which cookies you'll allow the site to store, you've forgotten why you came.

GDPR. We've all heard of it, and I'm convinced it must be an abbreviation of some Latin curse; if it isn't, it deserves to be adopted into Latin in the language's next release. While every tiny website is forced by law to obey the infamous regulation to the letter, the pages of the giant companies where we spend hours every day show it to us once and that's that.

But while the social networks and the search giants exploit their monopoly positions in the most flagrant and unceremonious way, the small and likable fish are forced to comply with a requirement that plainly doesn't work.

How did we get here? Is it worth reading the questions every site asks us about cookies? Are there more sensible solutions?

The Cookie Monster

GDPR is the European Union regulation that was meant to take care of protecting our data in general. How well it has managed… let's not go into detail; I'm sure you have your own answer.

Just as I'm sure that every time you open a website and are greeted by the mandatory window about the notorious “cookies,” you read carefully, point by point, the gripping and profound texts of what you are agreeing to.

I'm equally sure that afterwards you go in and check whether the settings you chose have been saved and are being applied exactly according to your preferences.

So what are these notorious cookies, and why are they so tasteless?

Fortune Cookie

Today's online world is a machine for processing personal data. As we have discussed before, this is what the business of the biggest companies, the ones that rule the online (and not only the online) world today, rests on.

GDPR arrived as a formal legal solution so that users would know what data is stored about them and would themselves grant that right to website owners. Except that today it does nothing at all, apart from being a nuisance.

Cookies are small pieces of code saved in your browser for a given site, and their job is to track and store data about your behavior one way or another. So that the next time you land on the same little patch of the global web, the most personalized content possible awaits you. So that, one way or another, the algorithms know your preferences.

And it really is convenient. You visit the online grocery store, and it already knows from your previous orders your address, your favorite brand of socks and the kind of goods to push on you most insistently. Or the news to offer you.

Cookie Cuckoo

Say you open Google for the first time. The consent window appears. In the first decades of the internet, the same role was played by the long bedsheets of words listing users' rights and obligations, which we had to agree to in order to install a piece of software.

The difference is that today you can voluntarily refuse a large part of what you are offered. Where agreeing to the terms used to mean a single click on a document you don't read (much like a contract with a mobile operator), now you have quite a few more options to choose from. And they tell you nothing, except that, as a rule, you as a user can't think of a single reason to read them.

Because online, we're all in a hurry these days!

We don't have time to read even meaningful texts, let alone the long terms of the “contract” under which we visit some website. Say, if we've dropped by Digital Stories.

Cookie Cake

On one side there is Google. The goal of the search engine, like that of any other website, is for you to take responsibility for the fact that certain data of yours will be stored.

But how much time do you spend on Google and how much reading Digital Stories? How much data does one site need to collect about you, and how much the other? And yet the path to both goes through the same steps, the same little screen, opened once, whose contents nobody reads.

So every user's goal is to find the “accept all” button as fast as possible. There are even browser extensions today that do it for us.

Still, you think it matters what you've agreed to?

Of course. So the next step, if you decide that independence and security come first for you, is to add yet another browser extension—one that deletes cookies according to your preferences.

Something for Every Taste

In the end, the decisions really ought to come from you, and what matters is knowing enough about the subject to make your own judgment. Which is something the current cookie system definitely does not achieve.

On the contrary, more often than not it reinforces our indifference to what we click in the annoying cookie window.

Or our paranoia about getting rid of every last one of them.

A few months ago, Google announced that it was adding, for Europe, the option to reject all of its cookies. Then it turned out that this meant you have the right to reject the ones that are not “essential.”

And which ones are essential?

If you're a lawyer with a few spare days and nights for reading, be my guest and check. As a result, the whole exercise turns into a tiresome example of digital marketing.

Gluten-Free

Perhaps the only thing we associate the notorious GDPR with today is precisely cookies. The truth is that, both in concept and in practice, they are a very small part of the “work” of the infamous regulation, which was meant to protect the data of all citizens of the European Union.

The abbreviation comes from the bureaucratically pompous General Data Protection Regulation. The fearsome four letters were adopted in 2016 and came into force two years later. It obviously aimed to win everyone's respect with the enormous threat of sanctions. It provided for fines of up to 20 million dollars or 4% of annual revenue! Truly rather intimidating; there was no way every website owner and every big company wouldn't take measures.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, these penalties turned out to be a gate in an open field. Like smoking indoors—it's supposedly been banned in Bulgaria for more than a decade, but take a stroll through the bars and restaurants of Sofia some evening.

So as not to make unfounded claims: in Bulgaria, the institution responsible for penalties and oversight in this area is the Commission for Personal Data Protection. Its annual report for 2021 shows that it received a total of 840 complaints, most of them related to video surveillance. The fines it imposed number… 38. For a total of 112,150 leva (about $58,000).

A Bitter Aftertaste

As far as cookies go, the next important step came on May 4, 2020. The European Data Protection Board considerably clarified the scope of the regulation with regard to consent. It must be freely given, informed, and a clear indication of the user's choice.

For example, it is not enough for the user to scroll down for consent to be assumed. Windows that cannot be closed until you accept are forbidden.

Broadly speaking, cookies are divided into first-party and third-party ones. The former belong to the site you are visiting, the latter to other organizations. Usually the latter are far more numerous—these are cookies with all sorts of uses, from tracking what you do on the site and reporting it to the owner through Google Analytics to the data needed to pick the best ad for you. First-party cookies, on the other hand, are usually tied to your actions on that particular site: they hold, for instance, the products you've put in your basket and the details you registered with on the page.

Boza for Pennies

The General Regulation governs “the processing, storage and use of personal data of natural persons by a third party—persons, companies or organizations.” All of this involves far more serious work than a little window in the browser. Larger companies must appoint specialists to organize their data storage processes. Already at the design stage of their information systems, they must invest serious effort and money in guaranteeing privacy…

GDPR was proudly proclaimed the biggest data protection initiative of the past 20 years undertaken by any organization or institution whatsoever. It guarantees “the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual.”

Users must have the right to access the stored data, as well as “the right to be forgotten.” In the event of a data leak, every company is obliged to personally inform the affected users within 72 hours. Does that actually happen?

At the Pastry Shop

And many more pretty fairy tales; let me not remind you how much this helped against the huge data leaks from the biggest companies, or from Bulgarian state institutions.

GDPR, however, keeps scaring people with those sanctions, which can always be turned into a weapon, and that is why all website owners are so diligent about at least offering the choice. Either way, there's not even any need for fine print here; all the print is large, and nobody reads it.

It's no accident that adding the little window is so easy today. A market niche opened up, and plenty of companies offer a ready-made selection of options. Owners of sites built on the most widespread solution, WordPress, have handy plugins that take care of the annoying necessity with a single click. Apps have appeared that automatically check whether your page meets the requirements.

Polly Wants a Cracker

Today there is a separate version of the rules for the UK, which has left the EU, the main difference being that people over 13 can consent to data storage, compared with 16 in the EU.

All of this created plenty of work for lawyers, who have remained the only ones interested in the subject (apart from companies afraid of penalties). Countless interpretations appeared of what exactly personal data is and how it must be handled according to the letter of the regulation.

Still, personal data is any information directly connected to a given person, or information that can be traced back to them. In other words: the fact that someone visited your site is not personal data (we still haven't come up with a decent singular for the word). The IP address they come from, however, can be considered personal data—rather subjectively—if it can be used to trace who the visitor is. As you know, you can't embrace the boundless, and so it is with this slippery subject.

Cookies with Coffee

The fact is that you can delete all cookies for any site at any moment. Just open the inspector of the browser you use, and on one of its subpages you'll find the option. Of course, this will delete all data from that site, and if you are logged in, you'll have to enter your details again.

And so, once we've deleted the cookies, are we safe from anyone knowing what we do online?

It may be no accident that it looks that way. The truth, though, is exactly the opposite—far more important is the data stored far away from us, on the servers of the various website owners. Yes, the well-meaning ones among them will surely follow the rules you agreed to with that notorious consent, but… the truth is that nobody can guarantee that to you anymore.

Cat's Tongues

Lawyers certainly have an interesting perspective, so expect the next digital story, on Friday, to be an interview with a leading expert on our personal information offline and online.

If you ask the European regulators, they'll tell you the processes are monitored meticulously. For instance, one of the big disputes with the monopolists, which even led to Zuckerberg's notorious threat to pull his offspring out of the EU, was over Meta's unwillingness to guarantee that Europeans' data is stored only on servers within the Union.

I don't know about you, but personally this question troubles me very little, because I have deep doubts about the foundations of the whole process.

In my view, at least, the far bigger issue that turns our data into a priceless commodity lies precisely in the consents we give ourselves, entirely voluntarily. In the trust we place in the system, in GDPR, in the regulators, in the harsh penalties laid down for violators. And above all: in the fact that we don't realize how important this data is. In our unwillingness to reflect on the notorious and indisputable truth so often repeated in Digital Stories: when something is free, you are the product. Or, as we say in Bulgaria: it's not the one who eats the banitsa, the traditional cheese pastry, who is to blame, but the one who hands it to him…

– What psychological qualities does a person need to succeed in information technology?

– There is one thing I see that unites everyone in the industry, including me, even though I don’t write code and I’m not a designer either. It’s the love of learning, the drive to solve problems. We all carry that curiosity, but here the urge to solve problems, the interest in new things, is sharpened. There is a constant desire to learn, and I think that is what makes people in the industry successful. Those who grow, who read, who have a natural inquisitiveness and interest, move forward. We can’t always be on the crest of the wave, but certainly, if we want to be successful in this industry in the long run, the love of knowledge, learning and growth is what unites all the success stories.

– But that is a double-edged sword; in a way it very easily turns against you. You keep moving forward and at some point you can’t stop, you’re interested in the next new thing, the next problem. You can’t draw the line.

– Exactly. Like everything else, this has its shadow, two sides of the same coin. Yes, it’s a quality that can help us grow and be good at our profession, but on the other side stands the shadow: it can be addictive, we may fail to set boundaries, and it becomes part of our identity.

– And perhaps the problem is becoming more serious in some way, because for more than a year and a half most of us have been working from home. And we like it, we feel more productive. I talk to quite a lot of people, and nobody works less just because they’re at home.

– Yes, that’s true. That’s why it’s good to remind ourselves that today we work in an environment where the work simply never ends. Our brain and our biology assume that we should have a clear end to the day, the way prehistoric people did: they went out of the cave, picked berries, chased animals, then came back, and everything that had been out there was over. It was the same with our grandparents, who farmed and kept animals. In the field you know you have to plow half a decare, about an eighth of an acre, that day. And by sunset that half decare is plowed, you can see it, touch it, tell yourself: there, that’s what I did today, done. Whereas for engineers and people in this field in general, that half decare can’t be seen. Sometimes it becomes visible after 4–5 months, but by then it’s something else entirely. The work doesn’t end, it keeps coming and you keep going. In the field, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t, because it’s already dark.

The human brain doesn’t know that the work never ends. And this is where

the responsibility falls on us—to tell ourselves that at some point we’re done.

If we wait for it to come from outside, it simply won’t happen. There are always bugs, the client will always write that they want something new. And this turns into a trap especially easily once our field is already at home. Then only we can set the boundaries.

– Sometimes the choice to work without rest is conscious and deliberate. Can it be that it doesn’t cause you problems?

– Actually, the problem isn’t long hours. If I go back again, our great-grandparents worked very, very hard in the fields. The problem, as Tony Schwartz says, is not so much the stress itself as the presence of rhythmic recovery. The equation of life is stress and rest; that balance is at the heart of everything.

If you find that balance, you can work even 12 hours a day, as long as you compensate with quality rest. You can sleep 6 hours and that can be enough, if you get full recovery within them, at least 2 hours of deep sleep. Time with the kids after work, if it recharges you and you’re not thinking about work, is also rest. If in the micro-moments a person manages to secure quality recovery for the mind and body, then they can absolutely live with long, intense work.

That is the healthy way: not to shield ourselves from stress, but to be able to recover effectively.

– What are the signs that we’ve crossed that line? That we’re beyond the level of stress we can compensate for?

– If we notice that in the evening, when we’ve finished for the day, we keep thinking about work. It happens to everyone from time to time, of course, but if it becomes a pattern, if we can’t “switch off,” then we have a problem. Even though I closed the laptop long ago, at 1 a.m. I’m still thinking about work. In the morning I open my eyes, the kids come in, and the first thing that comes to mind is to open the chat with my colleagues and see what needs fixing.

This happens much more often now because of working online. Because

even when you’re in the bathroom, you’re aware that you can go at any moment

and open the laptop.

The other indicator is sleep. When it starts to suffer—and not just its duration, I’m mainly talking about the quality of sleep—the line has been crossed. A lot of people ignore this, because they think that not sleeping is fashionable these days.

– And very soon it starts to show in our everyday life.

– Yes, we start to become irritable, both our mood and our behavior change. If a person manages to maintain good relationships, feels well, energized, has a positive outlook, manages to work hard, there’s no problem. But if we feel we’re becoming negative, that the work we used to like now annoys us, that we feel aversion toward our colleagues, cynicism, that every little thing starts to irritate us—then something is seriously wrong.

Another signal that is very clearly visible concerns memory. Even when we have cases of more serious mental health problems, we always examine memory first. For example, poor concentration: I can’t last long in a meeting without getting totally distracted, I start forgetting little things. We set off somewhere with the kids, and the car keys are still upstairs. It starts happening just like that, you feel your memory beginning to fail you. Then we’re talking about chronic levels of stress.

Physical aches that we somehow attribute to nerves are also a sign. What does “nerves” mean? Your stomach tightens, some people get dizzy, your back and neck hurt. These are not natural things.

No, it is not normal to have headaches or stomachaches and to have gone without sleep 2–3 times

a week. Having something hurt every day and needing to take painkillers is not okay. Something isn’t right. And I say this because many of us are used to neglecting these symptoms. They carry on like that for months, years, and then “suddenly” they burn out and wonder how it happened.

– It seems younger people are more prone to this kind of problem?

– Yes, between 20 and 30 is the first maturation, when a person wants to prove themselves to the world, and that happens through their career. In our civilization we more often start families after 30; until then the only focus is professional fulfillment, possibly supplemented by a circle of friends. Young people also don’t yet have developed skills for boundaries, for balance. That’s also when our strength feels inexhaustible. We have more energy and think we can give it away endlessly. Especially people for whom work comes first, who love what they do.

Or in a job you’ve held for many years and that has become part of you. I had a client who had reached complete professional burnout. She had risen through one company, from junior QA to director. Her whole career had been at one firm, she identified strongly with her role, and then it becomes very, very hard to switch off.

– Is that the moment to seek help? Or is there a way to get out of this cycle by changing jobs, setting some boundaries?

– By then it’s already too late. That’s why I talk about this topic a lot and run training campaigns. It’s good to become aware earlier, so things don’t reach such critical cases. To start rethinking your relationship with work earlier, to take up self-assessment. Not all of us have to go to a psychotherapist. It’s very useful to have mentors we can rely on. In such periods it’s good to learn from someone with more experience in a given field.

There are many things that need to be done, but they also depend on company culture. If a young person who hasn’t yet firmly built their values lands in a highly competitive culture, with managers who have high expectations and are themselves role models of workaholism, they can very easily slip.

On an individual level, it’s important for young people to grow and educate themselves, but to take their mental health seriously. Today many of them are interested in fitness, nutrition, sports, which is wonderful.

It’s time they took the same interest in their mental and emotional fitness.

“What am I doing in that direction?” “Do I have the ability to say no?” “Do I manage to relax?” “Do I manage to recharge?” “Can I stand up for my boundaries?” These are skills, which is why I call it fitness. It’s not a state—am I sick or am I healthy—but skills that help us stay in good shape.

– Communication certainly matters too, and today it is almost entirely online. It’s very depressing when everyone turns off their camera and you’re talking to some pink background. Perhaps it’s worth investing in communicating more fully, as much as possible, even online?

– Companies’ values and cultures will change. I’m amazed myself, and I’m watching to see what will happen. I had some clients, I recently did a webinar for them. We all know what a webinar is today:

the presenter talks, the other 50 people have their cameras off and are multitasking.

Before that I had tried making it a condition in my groups for people to turn their cameras on at least for a while, but then I resigned myself to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen. And at this company 47 out of 50 people had their cameras on, and the other three apologized and explained why they weren’t turning theirs on. The platform we were using for the call even struggled under the load, but it was extremely effective. Afterward I asked the manager, and she explained that they’re a somewhat more traditional company, they had never worked online and had decided it this way from the very start.

Everyone in that webinar participated actively. There were a lot of intelligent questions. That’s the way we can connect. Truly, it’s good to make our digital communication as close to live contact as we can. Not 100 percent of the time, because we really do get tired, there’s saturation, but for the important things.

Besides that, I think that

something more important, and a counter to individualism and selfishness, is empathy.

Listening to the other person, being present.

– Are there other ways to work in this direction?

– There are many solutions. Tim Ferriss has a technique: you switch off everything on your phone when you’re in a conversation. That way you can be fully present.

Also: let’s ask each other about things that really matter to us. Online, when we talk to colleagues, it’s usually: “How are you?” “All good!” “How was the weekend?” “Really cool!” Let’s ask each other deeper questions. What’s really going on, what was the hardest thing for you this week, what was the most interesting, what has surprised you lately?

Let’s not stay on the surface, let’s not settle for minimal contact,

but connect with people on an empathetic level and share. Share quality content, not just “the weather’s nice, everything’s fine.”

I hadn’t had a morning meeting in a long time; today I went out and had forgotten what it’s like to be outside at 9:30 a.m. That freshness of the air gave me a surge of energy. I looked up, and there was even sunshine. I went to the meeting with so much energy, such adrenaline bubbling inside me… and it was just a work coffee. That happened to me today. Do you see how different that is from “yes, I had a few meetings, they’re going well”?

– I really like that you talk about empathy. In this sector people are scattered across many countries, teams change, and empathy is much harder to achieve. It’s difficult to make deeper contact, the way you can in more traditional fields, where you work with a colleague for 20 years and remember what his daughter liked in kindergarten, and today you’re discussing his granddaughter. And here we also have different cultures…

– Then it becomes interesting in a different way; we bring curiosity into it too.

The fact that we don’t know people gives us the chance to learn many new things about them.

It’s hard, especially if you have no context about others, about their culture. But it’s something people always love to talk about. However clichéd it may be, such questions even help a person feel accepted, especially if they’re a minority in the group.

– Why does the stereotype exist that programmers are boring, nerdy, uncommunicative people?

– Who thinks programmers are boring?

– In a sense, I do. With many of them it’s hard to find a common topic outside work; communication has its peculiarities. In conversation they have a harder time expressing emotions. Very often discussions are binary, and the nuances get lost.

– I find it hard to put a label on it. I’d say everyone is different in how they communicate. But if we find it hard to communicate with someone, or we find it boring, or frightening, that says more about us. So it’s right to think about what exactly bothers us in that communication. When someone says “programmers are boring,” it says much more about their own notions than about programmers themselves.

There’s a certain understanding that they don’t express as many emotions. Yes, maybe, but that doesn’t mean they don’t experience them. Some people probably do find it boring to talk to them if they genuinely don’t show their emotions; it’s hard to catch them. But that still doesn’t mean they’re boring. They’re not as expressive, which doesn’t mean they’re less spiritual inside or that they don’t have a rich emotional world. So the question should be: “If we think programmers are more closed off and boring, what in us provokes us to think so?” Are we ourselves worried about being boring? Very often we dislike in others what we fear being ourselves. And the reverse: we like what we perhaps have.

– Do you know people who have been programmers for decades and still deal only with the technical side of the job? Why is this relatively rare? It’s expected that if you work as a programmer, at some point the next step in your growth is managing people.

– I know such people, I’ve had such clients too; the path is personal. In most companies there is the cultural and organizational element that there are more places for people to grow, and at some point, somewhat forcibly, they have to advance in that direction. But I see that companies are now more comfortable opening up space for technical experts who will go very deep into a subject and become architects. They may not lead teams, but they will go so deep into a technology that they can influence the organization through their knowledge.

It also matters what stage the company is at. Over the past 10 years many young product companies and startups have launched in Bulgaria. At a stage like that, when they’re growing, people have to grow along with them.

The sector itself, however, is very much bubbling right now.

It keeps growing and evolving. There are now larger companies too, with long-standing products that need to be maintained or deepened. At this stage a different kind of person is needed as well. Kim Scott gives the example of rock stars and superstars. At some point, when the company is at a more settled stage of development, it doesn’t need so many superstars, people who want to race upward and become managers. Or if the company reaches 100–120 people and makes millions with that capacity—we see that model too. Among those 100 people there aren’t 20 management positions to fight over. At such a stage it’s good for the company to have more rock stars. These are engineers who are very good at their role, know 2–3 technologies very well, and are ready to learn new ones if necessary. They will keep developing the product, but they don’t hanker after hierarchical advancement.

– Evidently the software world is far more colorful than I imagine it. And yet many people take this more traditional path and at some point move from the technical side to leadership. What matters most at that point, as a change, as a way of thinking, as a mindset?

– The first thing, for sure, is that it should be their personal choice, a direction in which they want to grow. Whether it’s something that will truly bring them joy. Whether working with people, managing the project, assigning and delegating tasks, solving problems will energize them.

I had a client who really wanted it, dreamed of it, found it interesting, but when he started doing it, he felt exhausted all day. It turned out that it was precisely the leadership tasks that wore him out. So it’s one thing to find it interesting, to want it, and another to see that these activities aren’t against your nature. Here we certainly have to give character its due, and mentality, even our personality traits. If the leadership function drains you, if you’re forcing yourself, things won’t work out. However hard you try to learn empathy and communication skills, if it will cost you dearly, there’s no point.

The next important step is for the person to make room for this identity. To accept that their job now is to take care of people and, through them, achieve a good product, rather than to create it personally as a programmer.

A team lead I’ve recently started working with has problems with time management. He knows it would be much faster and easier to do something himself, but his role is different now… Yes, I see you’re smiling, we all recognize ourselves here.

No, my role isn’t to write a wonderful product, but to create an environment in the team where the others will write a wonderful product

and for that to bring me the same satisfaction.

– Besides, programmers are in a way people who are used to learning things with clear rules, while here soft skills are expected to be somewhat innate, something you develop intuitively rather than by written rules.

– That’s true.

Some of the most successful team leads I’ve seen are precisely the quiet ones,

not the ones who are constantly speaking up. When they kindle it in themselves, they are very good listeners.

Programmers are people with this problem-solving orientation. If they also master empathy, they can become extraordinarily perceptive about others; some of them are even therapists at heart. Because they can listen, and also break a problem down into steps very well and apply their analytical thinking.

When we often deal with truly abstract situations, as interpersonal issues are, it’s very important to see objectively what the problem is and what pattern it fits. That’s why programmers in general have a natural aptitude, qualities that will serve them well in a team lead role. Perhaps not in the way we imagine—a person who is very talkative and presents brilliantly. We don’t really need that in the IT sector. What we need is someone who creates space for people to do their work well and to trust the team.

– We all sit behind screens for endless hours. When is it time to realize we need to get up from that computer, at least for a while?

– If I realize it’s time, then I’m already late. If you realize your eyes hurt, your back has stiffened, you haven’t eaten, you’re getting tired, it’s too late, and you most likely should have stopped an hour ago.

Let’s not wait to “realize,” for the body to show us, but proactively keep track of things. It has to come from us.

We can look at it from the outside, as an engineering problem. How do I arrange my breaks, the pause for water, for the bathroom, for food, so that I’m comfortable?

I love talking about a technique called “daydreaming.” I close all computers and devices, take off my glasses. I sit and look ahead. I simply do nothing. Even for one minute. We need to plan these pauses into our daily routine, so we don’t wait for the symptoms.

I'm sitting and chatting calmly with a friend, but I just can't hold out. I'm hooked, so I reach into my pocket and pull out the phone. I simply have to see who wrote. Why did the damn thing buzz a second ago?! And while I'm at it, I'll take a quick look at how many people have liked my new post…

We're all like that.

Today a fierce battle is being waged for our attention, and every weapon is fair game. For now, the online giants are winning it by a huge margin, and they are allowed absolutely everything. They take advantage of us, luring us to sink into our own bubble and to wait breathlessly for every next like. Of course, this is also closely tied to the way we take in information these days.

One of the solutions we use to save ourselves one by one is “digital minimalism.” But does it stand a chance of bringing about change, of going mainstream? How does it work? Are there alternatives?

The Phone Keeps Us Connected, the Phone Keeps Us Apart

“Addiction is the process of developing a psychological and/or physical dependence on a particular substance or activity. (…) The pleasure and enjoyment experienced at first, with prolonged use of the substance or activity, lead to a need to use them in order to restore one's normal state.”

I'm using the definition most of us would check first, taken straight from the Bulgarian Wikipedia. Well, doesn't it apply to all of us? Honestly, the nervousness with which heavy smokers reach for the pack once the precious minutes have passed is often a far more harmless sight than the ferocity and persistence with which we all dig into our pockets for the next dose of internet.

Sure, we think of it as a little bit of communication, of contact. But, clearly, at some point it turns against real contact.

Almost all of us today are victims of this addiction. And no wonder: Facebook has resources and capabilities Philip Morris could only dream of.

I Walk Through the World and Even Whistle as I Go

There is no doubt that computers, mobile phones and communication platforms are all technologies that make our lives easier and perhaps more interesting. But at some point we become their slaves… and here we thought the day when machines would take on that role was still far off.

Here are some specifics. According to an analysis of a 2018 study, we open our email on average every six minutes or less.

We use at least 56 apps a day, switching between them more than 300 times.

We spend about 4.5 hours a day tapping away on our phones.

For at least 40 percent of those hours, we are doing more than one thing at once.

Three years later, there is no reason to think the numbers aren't even higher. The battle is only getting fiercer.

Silence, Silence… It's All I Have Left After You

In the early days of the internet and computer games, there was more talk about addiction to them; then the topic quieted down. We were left with crude jokes about how in Asia they send people who can't tear themselves away from the internet for 10 hours to sanatoriums… and today we all spend that much time, and a lot more, interacting with the web. Without anyone trying to scare us. So there's no problem, right?

“I Used to Be a Human Being.” That's the title of the essay by blogger Andrew Sullivan that became a hit online in September 2016. Its subtitle reads: “An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.” The blogger tells, with great emotion, what he concluded from watching himself.

He writes that he was among the first people to move their lives online on the scale that all of us do today. And how he gradually felt himself turning into a creature bombarded by meaningless notifications, one that had completely replaced its natural priorities with constant staring at a screen. With attention taken up by (almost entirely) meaningless information that has no end and knows no rest. Of course, it rarely goes to such extremes, but for Sullivan fifteen years of life online ended in a hospital with neurological problems. When he got out, he set himself very strict limits and, as he puts it, returned to real life.

Calling Out Like a Partridge

Yes, we are innocent victims. Today everyone, on- or offline, is chiefly concerned with grabbing our attention. If it's a store, so that we buy its products; if it's a showcase site, so that we're impressed by what its owner can do. And if it's a communication platform, a chat or a social network, it wants to engage us so that we keep going after every click. So that we scroll. Again and again.

At first it feels good. And it really is good: you stay in touch with people, you can always satisfy your curiosity about what became of little Petar from fifth grade, whom you haven't seen in 20 years. Your best friend is always at hand, so you can ask whether you did the right thing by not saying “good morning” to that airhead who gets on your nerves…

But at some point it becomes too much.

As if I'm Walking Toward an Abyss

All of this brings terrible exhaustion in its wake. The effect accumulates. We follow the work chat, the likes on the blog, what's new in the stories, on Instagram and who knows what else… Every new channel tugs at a bit of our attention, tries (and often succeeds) to stir up emotions in us. And the more it succeeds, the more things spin out of control.

At some point it turns into an addiction more insidious than many others. Because it is treacherous, imperceptible, disguised behind momentary pleasures and, not least, free of social stigma. And it leads to the next step: constant anxiety in anticipation of the next buzz of the gadget in our pocket. Real face-to-face communication gets distorted in favor of the other kind.

And one more thing not to be underestimated: it recently became clear just how “contagious” staring at a screen is when two people are sitting together. It takes 30 seconds, and the effect is almost guaranteed: the other person pulls the phone out of their pocket too.

The Past Has Passed, the Future Hasn't

The past year helped this along too, by depriving us of the other, the normal option.

But what can we do to ease the dependence and slow the pace a little?

In 2019, Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism came out, offering one possible answer. Namely: try a 30-day “diet,” or, to use the trendier word, a “detox.” That way we could find out what really matters to us and then, gradually and in a controlled way, allow ourselves only that.

There is a certain logic to it; in fact, Newport is especially convincing in the first part, where he examines the ways every type of web page tries to keep us around longer. Everyone really does this, and so do I, with this text and every other one, except that the goal is different, and so is the meaning. Take those likes, for example. Yes, there's probably something pleasant about seeing that your friends like your photo, but by tomorrow it will have sunk into the feed, and what is left after it?

Everything Passes Under This Sky

Newport aptly compares smartphones, which have completely changed how we interact with the online world, to casino slot machines. Both were designed to keep you going, to keep you betting and losing, more and more. Except that in one case it's about money. And in the other, about something even more precious in life. Strength and energy you could devote to more meaningful and enjoyable things.

His concept looks back to older expressions of minimalism, from the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Marcus Aurelius. “Minimalism isn't just spending less money and owning fewer things than others. Minimalists make a far greater effort, sometimes even radically, to focus their lives on the things that mean something to them,” Newport writes.

Like Smoke up the Chimney

“The less, the better” is the core message of digital minimalism.

Newport's own short formulation: “Digital minimalism is a philosophy that helps you ask which digital communication tools (and which behaviors around them) add the most value to your life. It is motivated by the belief that intentionally and aggressively clearing away low-value digital noise and optimizing your use of the tools that really matter can significantly improve your life.”

Newport describes his experience with 1,600 volunteers who joined his experiment and went through the “information diet” described in the book. He sums up the practices they singled out as working best, and still, they largely overlap with the core message.

The first step is to sit down and think about which technologies really matter to you. Then, for 30 days, switch off everything that falls under “I can probably do without this.” During that month it's also a good idea to find more “analog pastimes” that somehow make up for the deprivation. Next comes drawing up a plan based on what you learned in those 30 days and easing back into normal life.

Only, in the best case, with a bit more awareness and 309,832,983 fewer apps on your phone.

You're in a Hurry, You Have No Time

So what, should we all become hermits? Oh no, not at all. For one thing, many people couldn't afford the digital minimalism Newport proposes, simply because much of their work is tied to social networks. And overly strict diets… always bounce back like a yo-yo. The same goes for other addictions.

Among Newport's other ideas are some worth thinking about: spending more time alone, leaving our phones at home when we go out for long walks. Even sitting down now and then to write letters to ourselves. Avoiding “likes” as a form of communication in favor of conversation, online if need be. When resting, preferring activities that take more effort over those where we passively consume information. Reading for understanding instead of just skimming.

At 100 Kilometers an Hour

Or maybe it's enough simply to stay mindful? We can't hand out exact prescriptions; that's not our specialty. But digital minimalism also sounds like a somewhat general and extreme concept that is unlikely ever to go mainstream.

Extremes rarely work in general, and abrupt decisions are not often the best ones either. The topic is big, and yet, in the spirit of minimalism, let's stop here. Coming soon: the fascinating perspective of a psychologist.

It is definitely worth it for each of us to stop every now and then and think about whether we should pull our personal boundary back a bit, toward the analog. To turn off at least the clearly unnecessary beeps the phone makes over every little thing. To pause and think before grabbing the pocket computer again just 10 seconds later. Chances are nothing all that important has happened…