Attention can be deliberately wielded, not just reclaimed

Evidence

I look both to art history and to vision studies to think about the relationship between attention and volition—how we might not only disentangle ourselves from the attention economy but learn to wield attention in a more intentional way. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 38

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Names the second redirection — attention as an intentional tool rather than a passive commodity.

Related

• Attention can be defined beyond action and receptivity (similarity 0.84)
• Attention is learned rather than innate, always and for everyone (similarity 0.83)
• Directing attention is trainable like breath control (similarity 0.83)
• Attention is the faculty by which we constitute social and ethical reality (similarity 0.83)
• Attention as means differs fundamentally from attention as end in itself (similarity 0.83)
• Attention defies any single fixed definition and demands continual restlessness. (similarity 0.82)
• Attention functions as the ground for ethics, not merely for personal satisfaction. (similarity 0.82)
• Literary studies must be reinvented, not merely recovered, as an attentional practice. (similarity 0.82)
• Attention is the defining political and existential question of the current era (similarity 0.82)
• Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource (similarity 0.82)
• Paying attention differs from spending time or being aware. (similarity 0.82)
• Attention exceeds any measurable property, so exchanging it for money always entails loss. (similarity 0.82)
• Patterns of attention determine what reality feels possible to us. (similarity 0.81)
• Attention itself can be the creative medium, not just the output (similarity 0.81)
• Attention is directional potential, not a static countable quantity. (similarity 0.81)