Attention
Our attention is sacred. It’s an act of worship in itself. An act of spiritual, mental, and emotional formation. When you give something your attention – a movie, a conversation, a project at work – you’re declaring it the most important thing in your life. It may sound dramatic, but at its core, it’s true. When you pay attention to something, you’... See more
Grace Capobianco • What We Talk About When We Talk About God
Instead of being a passive consumer of the web, I begin to feel as though the internet is molding itself around my intentions, transforming from a distraction machine into a precision instrument for creativity.
Sari Azout • The End of Productivity
The internet, or “the information superhighway” as we Germans like to call it 🫠 is overwhelming people while making them addicted to it. In the piece below, Kyle Chayka frames curation as a way to slow down that information autobahn. By slowing down, curation offers people time to breathe and fully take in a piece of “content” instead of mindlessl... See more
There is a long-standing, widespread belief that attention carries value. In English, attention is something that we “pay.” In Spanish, it is “lent.” The Swiss literary scholar Yves Citton, whose study of the digital age, “The Ecology of Attention,” argues against reducing attention to economic terms, suggested to me that it was traditionally consi... See more
Nathan Heller • The Battle for Attention | The New Yorker
What is attention?
As we are fed more content, we are pushed deeper into algorithmic niches. In return, we are encouraged to engage with more extreme and polarizing identifiers because it is more labelable, more indexable by the machine — the creation of the “Island". On this island, the slang, in-jokes, and archetypes which emerge as a community develops in isolatio... See more
TWELVE THESES ON ATTENTION
It explores the concept of true attention, emphasizing its importance for genuine encounters, human relationships, and personal freedom, while discussing the societal challenges and potential sanctuaries needed to cultivate it.
friendsofattention.net