Robert ShumakeAuthor

Attention and focus in the algorithmic age

Recommendation and generative systems are optimised to capture attention, which makes sustained focus a trainable countermeasure rather than a personality trait. Robert Shumake's practice titles teach concrete disciplines — breathwork, seated meditation drawn from Siddha, Buddhist and Bodhidharma lineages, and memory training — for restoring attention that algorithmic feeds fragment.

The feed is a training loop

Every scroll teaches the system what holds you and teaches you to be held. Naming that loop is the first practical step; the second is a daily practice that gives attention somewhere else to go.

Old methods, current problem

Breath regulation, single-point concentration and structured memory work were developed for minds without smartphones, but they target the same mechanism: voluntary control of where attention rests.

From the library

Books on attention in the algorithmic age

Titles from Robert Shumake's catalogue that develop this material in full.

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Direct answers

Questions people ask

Can meditation counter algorithmic distraction?
It targets the underlying capacity. Concentration practice trains voluntary attention, which is precisely what feed-based systems erode. These titles present it as daily practice with specific instructions, not as a general recommendation.

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