The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The second kind is constructive authenticity. It answers the question, Have I witnessed what I expected? We experience constructive authenticity when expectations set by media and advertising are fulfilled.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Sure, profits can be made in healthy economies, but the biggest returns can be found where investors buy low and sell high: whether it’s decades of disinvestment or an acute disaster, the biggest profits are to be found amid rubble and ruin, not milk and honey.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Authenticity somehow implies both fragility and eternity—something that has lasted a long time but may be endangered by modern forces. The authenticity of a place and its people are deeply intertwined not only because people make up the culture of a place but because the very notion of authenticity is predicated on the choices we make as free indiv
... See moreDavid A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
But generally, the move from government provision of housing, food, and jobs programs to this network of semiprivate organizations introduced perverse incentives into life-sustaining institutions. The result has been a wealth transfer of public money to boards of directors staffed largely by local elites that are more likely to be responsive to rea
... See moreDavid A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Since its beginning, the web has been a laboratory for identity formation.37 With the relative comfort of physical distance, digital networks can let us experiment with how we want to be perceived, what we want to be called, and how we present ourselves.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Authenticity collapses when something purported to be genuine is proved to be fake, expectations are not met, or we are not sufficiently convinced that what we are looking at or experiencing comports with our ongoing identity projects.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
We have entered a hyperreal era where simulacra come before, and therefore define, that which we call real. To put it in the language of authenticity: the media that is essential to constructive authenticity has now come to influence the character and selection of subjects that might be chosen for authenticity peddling in the first place.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Economic crises and uneven development, despite what CNBC or Econ 101 says, are an absolute necessity for the capitalist mode of production.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
The result is an ironic twist of fate: the very thing that made the area popular to begin with is diluted by corporatization.