Harris's transformation into a whistleblower is exceptional in part because his life leading up to it was so normal by Silicon Valley standards. Harris, who at the time of this writing is in his mid-thirties, was raised in the Bay Area. Like many engineers, he grew up hacking his Macintosh and writing computer code. He went to Stanford to study computer science and, after graduating, started a master's degree working in BJ Fogg's famed Persuasive Technology Lab --which explores how to use technology to change how people think and act. In Silicon Valley, Fogg is known as the "millionaire maker," a reference to the many people who passed through his lab and then applied what they learned to help build lucrative tech start-ups(a group that includes, among other dot-com luminaries, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger). Following this established path, Harris, once sufficiently schooled in the art of mind-device interaction, dropped out of the master's program to found Apture, a tech start-up that used pop-up factoids to increase the time users spent on websites.

Harris 成为吹哨人的转变是罕见的，部分原因是他的生活按照硅谷的标准来说是很正常的。Harris在我写这本书的时候处于30岁+的中期，他在湾区长大。像很多工程师一样，他的成长伴随着破解麦金塔和写计算机程序。他去了斯坦福读计算机科学，并且毕业后，在BJ Fogg的著名的说服技术实验室，一个探究怎么用科技改变人们思考和行动的方式。在硅谷，Fogg以“富豪制造商” 闻名，很多人进他的实验室后把他们学到的用于建造利润丰厚的科技初创企业 （一个群体，包括ins的联合创始人Mike Kreger等互联网名人）。沿着这条既定道路，Harris一充分学习了人机交互，就退学创办Apture，一个用弹出事实来增加用户在网站上花费的时间的科技初创公司。

In 2011, Google acquired Apture, and Harris was put to work on the Gmail inbox team. It was at Google where Harris, now working on products that could impact hundreds of millions of people's behaviors, began to grow concerned. After a mind-opening experience at Burning Man, Harris, in a move straight out of a Cameron Crowe screenplay, wrote a 144-slide manifesto titled" A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users' Attention". Harris sent the manifesto to a small group of friends at Google. It soon spread to thousands in the company, including co-CEO Larry Page, who called Harris into a meeting to discuss the bold ideas. Page named Harris to the newly invented position of "product philosopher".

2011年，谷歌收购了Apture，然后Harris被派到Gmail收件箱组工作。就是在谷歌，现在正在研发可以影响亿万用户的行为的谷歌，Harris开始越来越担忧。在 Burning Man 经历了一次令人大开眼界的经历后，Harris 直接从 Cameron Crowe 的剧本中走出来，写了一个 144 张幻灯片的宣言，题为“呼吁减少分心和尊重用户的注意力”。 Harris把这个宣言发给了谷歌的几个朋友。很快，这个宣言在谷歌几千人中传开，包括副总 Larry Page. Page 喊 Harris 开了个会讨论这些大胆的想法。接着Page就任命Harris了一个新职位“产品哲学家”。

But then: Nothing much changed. In a 2016 profile in the Atlantic, Harris blamed the lack of changes to the "inertia" of the organization and a lack of clarity about what he was advocating. The primary source of friction, of course, is almost certainly more simple: Minimizing distraction and respecting users' attention would reduce revenue. Compulsive use sells, which Harris now acknowledges when he claims that the attention economy drives companies like Google into a "race to the bottom of the brain stem."

但是后来，没有什么改变。在一个2016年的大西洋月刊简介中，Harris指责该组织的“惯性”缺乏改变，以及他所倡导的内容缺乏明确性。当然，摩擦的主要来源几乎是更明显：减少干扰并尊重用户的注意力会减少收益。Harris在声称注意力经济将谷歌这样的公司推向“脑干底部的竞赛”时，承认了这一点：强迫性使用才卖座。

So Harris quit, started a nonprofit called Time Well Spent with the mission of demanding technology that "serves us, not advertising," and went public with his warnings about how far technology companies are going to try to "hijack" our minds.

因此，Harris辞职了。他创办了一个叫做合理利用时间的非营利组织，以要求为我们服务而不是一直放广告的技术为使命。并且，他走入公众视野，做出关于科技公司将如何劫持我们的心智的警示。