Attention Economy
exploring the inner workings and dynamics of companies building products engineered to hook us, addict us, and hijack our attention to sell more ad inventory
sari and
Attention Economy
How we allocate our attention defines us even more than our purchases do. People have different amounts of money, so the things we buy don’t reflect values in the same way for everyone. The same purchase might represent a tremendous sacrifice for one person and a mere afterthought to another. But we all have the same widow’s mite of attention to distribute among the many things competing for it: family, friends, education, health, careers, church, politics, great books, lousy books, clickbait headlines, and viral posts about ridiculous people doing ridiculous things for no particular reason. Our limited attention budget forces us to make choices, and those choices both reveal our values and create our characters.
I want to be realistic about how the mind works today, which is on multiple streams. And this situation isn’t going to change. We can set up full attention as an ideal, but our digital devices are producing a different way of attending.
Dirt • Dirt: Disordered Attention
Being fine with periods of solitude, working alone, pushing things forward without others cheering you on...that's a superpower.
The ability to run your own race, despite what the world is doing, initially looks behind - but puts you out front.
Dr. Julie Gurnertwitter.comI guess I meditate because attention is my art form. I’d even wager that much of what we call art — paintings, novels, poetry — are secondary, byproducts of rarefied attention. Attention, then is the primary art form.
Why I Meditate
the most convincing thing I've read on why to meditate