""" In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. (Simon 1971.) """
one could also say that when there's a scarcity of newsworthy events, or things to cover that might sell advertising to certain demographics, you get entirely new media things (like TMZ) which are the trashy digital version of the UK tabloid press.
if such media organizations within that category think there is a scarcity of attention, they'll fabricate something new and shocking and hype it endlessly until it becomes a top item.
media entities creating entire media properties/brands for the purpose of reporting about the goings-on of other media entities/celebrities/brands.
it's like an ouroboros of media made from kardashians, hype, fear, angst, anger (hello rupert murdoch).
now combine the above with what I would charitably describe as weaponized advertising technology, building profiles on individual facebook/twitter/instagram/tiktok/whatever social media users and their extended friends network.
However, reading newsworthy events takes a lot of brain energy, and you can’t sustain that all day. That means if you want people to spend a lot of time consuming your content, it has to be easy to consume content.
//EDIT: Decent Roger Waters album, though. I should hunt it down on vinyl.
"The Shallows" by Carr - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book) - was even worse. Published in 2010, based on research dating up to about 2008, it said, "Huh. Reading stuff on a screen is weird. We need to be really, really careful about what we do with that going forward."
And it was entirely ignored as we launched into the smartphone, attention-vampire model of personal electronics.
https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webc...
Note from the creator, who had to remove it from his website at the request of Postman's estate: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/amusing-ourselves-to-deat...
https://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/04/telev...
I think it's a great idea. But, as always, determining what is on that bookshelf is a tough one.
The Harvard Classics was a great attempt about a century ago [0]. 'Dr. Elliot's 5 foot shelf of books' was what an undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1909 included. Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot put together about all of the great books that those Gilded Age scions were supposed to digest.
Personally speaking, the greatest thing about the Harvard Classics was the 15-minute-a-day Reading Guide to the corpus. I went through it all a few years ago, and man, that was a really good idea. Like, I like Shakespeare now; he's really good! And I read through that philosophy finally, and that was really good too! And, lord, the poetry; I never really liked poems, but now I really love them. Most days were like that for me. I'll fully admit though, there were some real stinkers in there. But only once in a while.
If you'd like to read along too, you can download scanned versions of the books here: https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120212 . For example, today's reading is:
Vol. 2, pp. 31-43 : Plato's Crito -- Socrates unceasingly strove for beauty, truth, and perfection. Sentenced to death on a false charge, he refused to escape from the death cell, even when opportunity was offered.
As an aside, I'd love for an updated version of the Harvard Classics complete with 15-minute-a-day type readings or other media. I really did look forward to that dose of mind-training every day when I went through it. Does anyone know of a good place for daily mind training that is like this?
I'll try my level best to post the daily reading every day for the next year. Let's use those posts as a place to discuss the readings. Join me on this 15-minute-a-day quest to bettering ourselves.
A good bookcase still wins. Turns out I don't have time for "everything" anyway (and it's not really got everything, anyway, though The Web is very good at delivering 'everything' when it comes to cheap trivia)
My kids are constantly bringing home all kinds of interesting things from the library, and I remember how much cool stuff there is on the shelves from my youth. That stuff is just missing from the web.
I'm surprised traditional publishers, the folks that actually print books, don't start working back through their catalogs building some kind of online library. I suspect that its because of the way contracts are written that don't leave anybody owning the complete book. I suspect you would have to go back to authors, photographers, and illustrators and renegotiate use of assets again.
The cynic in me says that hundreds of people guessed about computer's future in 1970s that some of them are bound to be right. But Simon's prediction seems genuinely amazing.
(well, computers for access, I guess they had some impact on publishing and such by then)
In this way, information sources can destroy attention rather than foster efficient allocation (which is hard work).
It like everything is done to prevent people's mind to be at peace and to relax. The constant noise and audio/visual pollution we see everywhere is deeply troubling.
You cannot go to a simple store without some music being played, often very loudly for no reason.
I went to my parent's house the other day and the TV was on. I had to turn it off so we could have a normal conversation like normal people do. The TV was constantly pulling our attention on some stupid crap like ads or some garbage program that tries to polarize people.
My parents are amused that I have cable tv but have not even plugged the boxes in. It was part of the rental I currently have. There is most certainly more commercials there no today too. Average length of show has over the past 30 years dropped by at least 5 mins per 30 mins. They even squash out the credits to get more commercials in, with overlays for more.
But recently I have started to think of these people as thieves of my time. They are monetizing my time, my location, my browsing habits. All so they can sell a square of internet to someone else to sell me shoes. Done in milliseconds. With the hope that I will click on it and buy something.
There are times I want to be advertised to. When I am looking for something. I used to buy computer shopper just for that very reason. But at all other times it is like they have leached on to us and are always vying for that small splinter of time. But there are so many they consume more than I like.
I swear certain stores in Japan are the worst in this regard. I’ve never come across anything near this bad in any other countries I’ve been to. My wife refuses to go into certain chains and I can’t blame her.
Bright lights, loud music, signages literally everywhere and random yelling of announcements over crackling speaker.
Of course not all stores are like this but I’ve never really cared about noise in shops until I started living in Japan recently.
I’ve found that my shopping is more impulsive when I have to deal with that background racket plus a toddler trying to grab bright, shiny packages.
My solution: do what I can to avoid bringing toddler grocery shopping, wear earbuds with my music playing just loud enough to overcome store sound system.
For me, the more distracted I am, the more shit I can tolerate. I'm sure many work the same. I believe that this is the "circus" part of the ancient "bread and circuses" phrase.
For me, it's one of the reasons why I no longer go to such events.
It's like that at my (Boomer) parents' house too: If it wasn't for me consciously and constantly (re-)turning it off, the TV would be blaring during all waking hours--sometimes two TVs in two different rooms, working our anxiety up with two different BREAKING NEWS updates simultaneously!
But before I get all high and mighty, I look at my own generation which has their smartphones dinging and buzzing at them constantly, feeding them that same steady drip. I remember pre-COVID sitting at a restaurant and watching this couple that seemed to be on a date, except their phones were vibrating and dinging every 5 seconds, interrupting whatever it was they were talking about, and they just couldn't ignore them. They couldn't just let their minds be at peace and relax, as you put it. They ended up not even talking to each other--just constantly checking and swiping, then checking again, then tapping, then swiping, then checking, then swiping, then checking and checking again OMG it must be exhausting! Like the Las Vegas Strip in your brain for hours straight!
I think that our human nature is the source of this. Having spare time often means being bored (initially an unpleasant sensation) and potentially coming to terms with your own life, behavior and intentions. Only after a while of discomfort do you get the gains: creativity and growth.
I have introduced people around me to meditation, and some just cannot bear to be idle. They start to ruminate and feel like they can handle it.
There's always a cost when it's our attention. We've been in a war for our attention for many years. What I don't understand is why everyone puts emphasis on social media and not digital media in general? Television held the crown for many years and still does.
Read Jerry Mander and his thoughts about advertisements. You'll never think about them the same when you realize they are implanting into your head and you can never get them out.
This is why tech companies have become the wealthiest corporations in human history, and radio station conglomerates have not.
What radio did was look for ways to eliminate dependencies on "the talent." And what they should have done is get more talent and put the incentives on interactions.
Radio was super compelling. Audio only material still is. Being able to listen while doing other stuff, like driving, software, all sorts of partial attention consuming tasks makes for an audio only market that is consistent and demanding.
And it was, and still is going nowhere!
Radio got this horribly wrong, and they got it wrong because they did not understand what compelling means and why that matters.[0]
And they got it wrong because of raw greed and a failure to respect their listeners, who form the heart of what was otherwise a government protected magic money machine![1]
So, what they did was research the tunes, sort them into buckets and blast those out as cheaply as they could, and at the same time water down the talent by having them record all sorts of stuff for many cities thinking recordings are almost as good as real people are.
And what that did was nationalize radio making it bland and soul less. And then rise of the Internet and the phones being portable radios, among many other things, completely dominated.
Radio divides right along Internet / pre Internet lines. Older people mostly, but not completely, like radio and can relate to it well enough to listen. Maybe during work, or a drive.
And there is talk radio. When it is done right, talk radio is very compelling! The divide here is mostly old vs. young, but also authoritarian vs more egalitarian. Talk radio plays extremely well to authoritarians! It can play well to others, but the industry is establishment aligned and that is hard to shake due to very large numbers of stations being owned by single entities.
It is a mess nowadays. But it could have been much better.
Podcasts have replaced this stuff for many, and there are plenty of tou tube people doing the work radio used to do.
Having video is nice, but totally optional.
-----
[0] Thought experiment:
Say you get two streams. Stations. One is great quality, but dull. The other is of dubious quality, but super compelling!
Which one do you listen to? Why?
Which one do you believe most others listen to and why?
What do you feel explains your answer being different?
[1] Fact is we are super good at detecting other minds through communications. It can be simple or complicated, and it does not matter much at all. We connect, identify and start to bond with and understand this other person well. This is daily relevance and once it is established, people crave it and will put up with a lot to keep their daily driver type person happy, healthy and able to entertain and inform us every day.
Regarding television being king, According to statistica, the number of social media users in the US is 294 million (https://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smart...). Whereas the number of television users is about 305 million (https://www.statista.com/statistics/243789/number-of-tv-hous...). Even though these numbers are comparable now, the increased effectiveness of social media and its popularity among younger populations makes it a more effective means of mining our attention than television in general.
Haven't there been a number of studies/articles written about how Facebook/Google sometimes really suck at delivering ads to the correct people that ad-buyer's ask for? Anecdotally, I've gotten ads for burger shops in Chicago while living in California.
The above fear mongering, worst case claim, makes it real hard for me to take this guys philosophical /ethical break down seriously.
If you set an advertising campaign that specific, you're going to get no impressions. Researchers keep using these examples of "disturbing levels of specificity" of Facebook targeting. No advertisers actually do this. They're too lazy and they want volume. They do plenty of other disturbing things but this is not one of them.
I think some kind of AI employed here, would end up doing things like this and more, may be not right now but in very near future.
just be correlating details like IP space geolocation, nevermind GPS/location API permission on a phone, with what pages a person likes, their biographical details, their friend network and the location data from those friends, advertising can get extremely targeted.
Any Renascence courtesan (or tribal leader) could have told you that human attention is valuable. The difference now is that attention is quite nearby fungible, and near-readily exchangeable for dollars and cents. Just wait until eye-tracked advertising takes off.
The problem is that you can't say "Marx" without instantly triggering some people into ideological flamewar. That's boring and we don't need that.
The current title seems like a fair balance because it doesn't fundamentally change the point, and when you go to the article itself you can learn that it means "commodity in the Marxist sense", or something along those lines.
Instead of advertisers setting targeting me, I should be able to target them (when I deign to pay for something with my attention).
> Traditional advertising could never get your attention.
Are you serious?
> Before social media advertising would have to hitch a ride with some content produced for something else.
This is exactly what social media advertising does.
>Billboards, newspapers, television shows, and magazines all tried to provide a use value to their customers and audiences
What does that even mean?
Advertising was effectively getting attention and subverting behavior long before the internet. Watch the Century of the Self for some prime examples.
Commoditization is (arguably) a very good thing: it allows the market to make stable pricing decisions (at various risk levels) without having to worry about the exact load of corn (or human attention units) showing up right when needed. But it's also a fundamentally obfuscative force: the commoditizing party is incentivized to lie about the underlying asset's value. Advertising exemplifies this to a greater extent than agriculture: we don't really know what attention is, and so it's much easier (and more profitable) to misrepresent to buyers.
Subprime Attention Crisis[1] is a really fantastic analysis of the attention market, this specific sort of commoditization, and its latent risks.
[1]: https://www.fsgoriginals.com/books/subprime-attention-crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
The theoretical basis of alienation is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists.
that sure sounds like a paycheck-to-paycheck, permanent renter class person that's become trapped in a debt-laden advertising-driven consumer lifestyle to me.
The more interesting thought (and equally as unoriginal) is 'The Internet' has effectively commoditized human attention. The commoditization happens because most knowledge easily accessible. This changes your attentive value from raw ability to gather information, the old regime, to the ability to create and synthesize across domains.
I'm interested to see if this means we see fewer 'great entrepreneurs' and more bootstrapped businesses in the $10-500m revenue range built by people who can learn to be a solo-developer/mercenary leader with ruthless business sense.
It is really interesting to see that you specify "enterpreneurs", instead of concerned about losing potential great artists, scientists, philosophers.
I mean, where would we be, if the past Shakespeare, Einstien and Newtons were perpetually distracted and preventing them from making works of art and discoveries we now value most?
Before that, through mass print media and newspapers.
companies like nielsen made attempts to quantify and measure actual viewership, hard to do in the 1-way-analog-broadcast era.
Big difference now is that every social media thing has its own app that can specifically track ever click, every scroll, every like, viewing time per image and page, on an extremely granular basis.
Look at why reddit is trying so hard to steer people into using their app rather than use it through a browser.
ultimately the revenue stream for these app based social media things comes from the company selling advertising to you, of course. it's just much more targeted now than in the analog broadcast era.
The issue is the introduction of smartphone, which is a device that is with you 24x7.
However, revealing everything spreads the user's attention in every little area. There is no concentrated focus on any one thing. As a result, the user doesn't really absorb what they're reading deeply. They don't absorb information in a detailed way because there's something else they have to click around the corner.
To improve human attention designers have to say no to displaying certain things and focus on the few that's essential. This is easier said than done, but needs to be done.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26153331
archive of OP: https://web.archive.org/web/20210216125517/https://craigwrit...
I'd donate to a non-profit (or benefit corp) version of facecrook. Without paying their industrial psychologists to figure out how to steal more of my attention, the costs to run would be reasonably affordable for a world that is getting sick of FB.
I haven't thought about this alot and I'm very curious shat other on here might think about this idea.
I dont see this as inherently bad but actually a sign of progress. the things I detest are basically perversions of attention related to some hack in our attention mechanism, for instance businesses that exploit peoples gambling addiction (or addiction of any kind).
They weren't thrust on us, and we did choose those changes. The information and the implications of that information were available to everyone from the beginning. I quit Facebook and Twitter in 2007ish because it was obvious where social media was going, and I'm not particularly smart, prescient, or well-informed. Nor was I alone in coming to that conclusion: many people were saying and writing this from the beginning. People didn't listen, because they liked it at the time. Even now, when so much has happened, billions of people still continue to choose to use social media, claiming they don't have a choice in the matter. I'm not saying they're bad for making a different choice than me, but it is obviously a choice.
Psychology knows these concepts: Volition and executive functions. To fix the lack of the former Wikipedia suggests: Nothing, and for the lack of the latter it suggests CBT ( cock and b.., I mean cognitive behavior therapy) a.k.a nothing again, since cognitive behaviour therapy is a pseudoscientific scam that does not work. Also: "More research is required to develop interventions that can improve executive functions and help people generalize those skills to daily activities and settings." Wow, yeah, that is totally the reason for why there are no solutions for this! We just haven't done enough SCIENCE-ing, that's it folks! S C I E N C E!
So, I'm pretty open for new ideas here. Maybe an actual neuroscientist could chime in and lecture us about how our neuronal circuits work together to create attention, how the SAS works or something and how we could improve it. But I suspect my attention span is to short and I wouldn't be able to follow along anyway. Welp...
netflix should have to pay ME if they want me to gobble up the content they put out...
"But this business model is not inevitable, nor is Marx correct about there being one and only one ethical system that results from a given mode of production. If we, as a society, made a conscious decision on how we wanted to live, in particular, if we decided that we valued new and more interpersonal connections without our local communities, then we could use those same market forces to encourage lots of such connections to happen"
If you're already starting with Marx you ought to take him seriously. The author owes us an explanation as to why Marx is wrong when he recognized that our values are the product of our material relations, and that we do not just wish them into existence as we please. You can't go pre social media any more than you can go pre-industrial. In Marxist analysis, the market forces use you.
If you're going to keep one aspect of Marxism stick with the materialism, not his theory of value.
