Notes on an attention economy
Michael Erard's "A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention" reiterates Herbert Simon's 1971 prediction of an attention shortage: "What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients," and asks what an attention economy would really look like. Apart from some extremely dubious Ronald Reagan worship, the article is a fascinating read.
I imagine attention festivals: week-long multimedia, cross-industry carnivals of readings, installations, and performances, where you go from a tent with 30-second films, guitar solos, 10-minute video games, and haiku to the tent with only Andy Warhol movies, to a myriad of venues with other media forms and activities requiring other attention lengths. In the Nano Tent, you can hear ringtones and read tweets. A festival organized not by the forms of the commodities themselves but of the experience of interacting with them. Not organized by time elapsed, but by cognitive investment: a pop song, which goes by quickly, can resonate for days; a poem, which can go by more quickly, sticks through a season. A festival in which you can see images of your brain on knitting and on Twitter.A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention (via Futurismic)I imagine a retail sector for cultural products that's organized around the attention span: not around "books" or "music" but around short stories and pop songs in one aisle, poems and arias in the other. In the long store: 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, big novels, beer brewing equipment, DVDs of The Wire. Clerks could suggest and build attentional menus. We would develop attentional connoisseurship: the right pairings of the short and long. We would understand, and promote, attentional health.
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The 'media grouped-by-attention festival' sounds like something often seen at the end of essays, where the author has become so impressed with his own idea he thinks an example of it will exclude all others and become a mainstay of mainstream culture.
A short story and a film might take similar lengths of time to digest, but they are disimilar in so many other ways
this sounds like one of those egg-head grandiose visions from a 1950s futurists who forgot that future entails things that folks give a sh*t about.
"attention festival"... are you for real?
we already have "attention festivals" it's just that nobody sees it through the pseudo-academic/bored-nerd lens of the "attention" concept. we call them "festivals"... or perhaps "fairs", or "carnivals"--places with tents and stands full of different things that consume different amounts of "attention".
tell me, which tent at this "Attention Festival" can show me the Kitchen of Tomorrow?
Interesting opening of the topic of what attention is and how it is used and misused in general...
I agree with #1 who says "the author has become so impressed with his own idea he thinks an example of it will exclude all others and become a mainstay of mainstream culture." --- in that there is a jump to action (conclusion) where the topic is broader than what the solution offers...
I have been looking at 'attention' as a prime force of humanity for a few years - playing with the notion that attention itself is our own most valuable natural resource. Each person, individually, has some amount and quality of attention at any given time. There is intense competition for our attention. The advertising industry is one of the biggest in our economy and it's aim is to capture our attention (for their own manipulative ends).
Our attention is what we pay. It's our real power. It is what is commanded by authorities (be they parents or bosses or addictions) and what is used to distract us from other things when those with an interest have need to not have 'something' attended to.
We who are makers, writers, painters, thinkers, researchers... who engage in focused attention as a way of life and means for living engage with the power and the joy of 'getting in the Zone' with attention in order to do our best work.
Everything from our pets to our creditors want our attention - everyone has the potential to harness their own attention and NOT be sucked into the vortex of fascination and squander our main energy...
I haven't come up with a conclusion. I rely on some kind of meditation in order to stay present in attention and I find this very helpful. I find it easy to become distracted and easy to give over my attention to all kinds of things that don't really merit it.
Like money, it seems like having a 'savings account' for attention would be great. However, like electricity, we don't seem to have the means to store it. Wise usage seems like the appropriate method but we don't have a great track record on such an approach.
Thank you for your attention on this topic...
Any thoughts?
the 'long' store should be full of children and bonsai trees
Brewing equipment and DVD's belong in a 'not-quite-as-short-as-the-short-tent' tent.
The Attention Festival...kind of sounds like the internet to me.
Isn't that basically Burning Man?
Not-with-standing the above criticism, I think "media grouped by attention" would be a fine way to organize content on a web site. A person's current available attention is probably just as important an organizing principle as taxonomy.
just the annual fair with different rides.
I agree with the naysayers, basically. But Dhalgren makes a brilliant point. The attention festival is not a where or when, it simply is, and we make a new one for ourselves with Google (or other aggregating tools) many times a day. Prophetic, but far removed from its manifestation, right under the author's nose.
the underground attention economy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/24/86-percent-rise-in-adhd-m_n_266818.html
tl;dr
:)
@#3--Don't we store electricity in batteries?
Five years ago I came up with the idea for the Short Attention Span Philosopher:
http://www.archive.org/details/RoyTrumbullBertoltBrecht
The earliest recorded short attention span was of the man who asked Hillel to explain Judaism while standing on one foot.
well well, just listened to the first Short Attention Span Philosopher file and now I wonder if Heinlein plagiarized Dorothy?
*Yawn*
Problem is, attention may be measured by time, but it is given based on interest. I've sat through 3 hour long movies and thought, "This is awesome! I could watch another 3 hours of this and love it!" And I've sat through the 30-second, "Free Credit Report" ads so often that at the beginning of them, I feel as if, should I die before the end, that would be OK.
Great novel? Can't stand to see the last page. Crappy blog post? 100 words and... click.
Attention isn't about the time spent; it's about the value received.
huh?
At #16 Takuan: I mean that attention isn't fungible. If that's any less huh-worthy. One hour of my time is one hour of my time, regardless of whether I spend it doing something I value highly (let's say, time with family) or something I have no choice in but must do (get stuck in traffic).
Time is not a good measure of attention, I don't think. It may factor into it. But there are other inputs, too.
sorry, I forgot what you were saying.
kidding, kidding!
#3, our most important resource is time; yet we spend it very foolishly.
I was #3....
Sorry to be so wordy earlier...
Hershmire, I think that time is what we are given, and attention is what we do with it, and yes we act foolishly time and again, usually in small ways. But eeesh, over and over and it sure builds up.
Funklord, yeah, of course we do, but in small quantities. People can amass billions of dollars in savings, but nothing near that kind of volume of stored electrical energy. How much is $17bn worth of electricity? and how much space does it take to store that?
Anyway, I'm a total doofus and my earlier post was meandering and just badly written.
TLDR!
Attention is very hard to... hey! Let's ride bikes!
well, literaly didn;t read. Valdis got the oh-so-witty response in long before I did.
Where's the edit, BB? I need to erase my shame.
Short attention span philosophy is hard to distinguish from good jokes. I myself once experienced a measure of illumination at the point where the bear says, "Say, you're not just here for the hunting."
heh!
JFrance: No shame. Your comment is good because it points out Valdis' lovely joke. Conversation does not live by punchlines alone.
http://instantrimshot.com/
Meh, this would take too long to read.
I agree with #3's summary quite wholeheartedly. It occured to me that the public consciousness is slowly becoming aware of what he summarizes so succinctly.
I agree that you can't really 'store' attention, but that you can enhance your capacity/capability for it. I think it may be one of the reasons why some monks call it 'practice'. I myself do find it very helpful to 'practice' my attention in all sorts of ways - the more I practice, the more my ability to focus and pay attention grows.
BTW. Has anyone noticed how 'mindfullness' is becoming the next fad in the world of commercial enlightenment? Courses are popping up everywhere and most seem to pitch it essentially as 'attention training'. It seems as if the collective consciousness is catching a sniff of 'attention-awareness'.