The Great Fracturing of American Attention
... See moreThe reality of the attention age is that everywhere you look, both formal and substantive attentional regimes have collapsed. And where there is no attentional regime, no formal set of institutions to force public attention on a topic, no basic rules for who will speak when and who will listen, the need for attention becomes exclusive; it swallows
Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention. But doing that by loudly quitting Facebook and then tweeting about it is the same mistake as thinking that the imaginary Pera is a real island that we can reach by boat. A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind. What is needed, then, is not a “once
... See moreJenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to noti
... See moreJenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
We need to be able to think across different time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter) cycles, to pause for consideration when clickbait would have us click, to risk unpopularity by searching for context when our Facebook feed is an outpouring of unchecked outrage and scapegoating, to closely study the way
... See moreJenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
In an age of attention scarcity, the greatest act of good citizenship may be learning to withdraw your attention from everything except the battles you’ve chosen to fight.