attention is sacred
exploring the sacred nature of "attention"
sari and
attention is sacred
The first digital ad was displayed in 1994 on hotwired.com — the ad had a click-through rate of 44%, compared to an average of 0.46% for online display ads last year.
The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction . Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.
The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
Ted Gioia • The State of the Culture, 2024
Instead of movies, users get served up an endless sequence of 15-second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners hear bite-sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these tiny videos—just enough for a dopamine hit, and no more.
This is the new culture. And its most striking feature is the absence of Culture (with a capital C) or even mindless entertainment—both get replaced by compulsive activity.
Compassion, in contrast, means that I identify with the afflicted individual so fully that I feed him for the same reason I feed myself: because we are both hungry. In other words, I have paid him attention.
Robert Zaretsky • Simone Weil’s Radical Conception of Attention
going slow
calmness is a superpower and why we need to slow the fuck down.
Keely Adler and • 134 cards
From Jorge Luis Borges:
I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.
Many things in modernity are brain dead, but I can’t think of anything worse than the short form dystopias of TikTok and Instagram. They’re materially making people dumber, breeding addict behavior (particularly in the young) and ultimately ruining the lives of normies. It’s depressing to think about the countless kids who might have started garage... See more
Adam Singer • TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison
The vast interconnection enabled by digital platforms has ended up creating more of a sense of sameness than diversity. Users are subtly guided toward the same subsets of topics, urged on by recommendations that are designed not to serve their interests but to create profitable attention fodder to sell to advertisers. Instagram doesn’t care that yo... See more
