On Attention and the Internet
It seems to me that, through the way Reddit and YouTube and social media work, there’s such an emphasis on creating distinctions and communities, and it’s just created an explosion of interest in ideological sub-groupings that had been completely forgotten. I started in politics in the early ‘00s, and it just didn’t have this flavor. If you were a... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
The “soft” characteristics of any kind of contemplative behavior (slowness, eddying, meandering) make it easy to devalue. And this, too: creative space often feels resistant, like it’s denying us something, won’t speak, won’t produce—when in reality it’s just quiet, it’s not dancing for us, or “entertaining,” or feeding us dopamine edibles.
Lia Purpura Published • The Ecology of Attention
Attention is a finite resource, and how we choose to spend our attention online is, in some ways, a direct reflection of where human culture has gone in an era where access to information is basically unlimited. We are very much in our teenage years—that is, we suddenly have all these new capabilities and it’s really easy to just run wild. But... See more
Laurel Schwulst • Charles Broskoski on self-discovery that happens upon revisiting things you’ve accumulated over time
We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and... See more
Jenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Scrolling displaces observation, shuts out occasions for self-generated thought, silences out-of-the-blue invitations. Checking the phone reroutes the discomfort of blankness and emptiness. It stoppers authentic—often anxious—waiting. And, even more disturbing, scrolling narrows the field of my curiosity.
Lia Purpura • The Ecology of Attention
And I do think there is this way in which I would love the thing where I can kind of pay for the algorithm I want. And it does feel like we’ve backed into an internet now that is corroding. And I wonder how long that is actually sustainable for. It’s hard and it’s frustrating. And you’re a little bit locked in because you’ve built a million... See more