Attention and technology co-evolve through reciprocal causation

Evidence

Attention is not, however, removed or apart from the technological change it brings about. Rather, it is engaged in a feedback loop with the technological environment within which it operates through the unconscious and nonconscious processes that affect not only the background from which attention selects but also the mechanisms of selection themselves. Thus technical beings and living beings are involved in continuous reciprocal causation in which both groups change together in coordinated and indeed synergistic ways. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 534

Categorization

• XREF: Feedback-loop co-evolution echoes anticipatory-regulation mechanisms in control theory and niche-construction in evolutionary biology. — connects to: Public discourse about technology shapes behavior, attention, and capital flows — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 57; Attention selects which technical developments get pursued, forming a recursive loop with the brain — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 532; Smartphone screens monopolize attention formation toward a single engineered kind — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 201 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Smartphone screens monopolize attention formation toward a single engineered kind #expands (0.85) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 201
• Attention-maximizing technologies can reduce rather than increase user control over attention #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 635
• Email’s adoption functioned as large-scale operant conditioning preparing users for later attention harvesting #corroborates (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 656
• Screen culture trains us to misperceive attention as singular and task-oriented #expands (0.78) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 204
• Technology-enabled attention extraction both creates the crisis and reveals attention’s true importance #responds-to (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 265