Attention is a shared common resource, not private property.

Evidence

Now we are well into the twenty-first century, and a comparable process of industrialized exploitation-plus-destruction is taking place. Only this time, it’s not water or air that is being despoiled, but the intangible stuff of the human spirit: our curiosity, our hopes, our relationships, our desires, our aspirations, and our actual dreams. These are the movements of the mind that power the mills of the attention economy. And these are the parts of ourselves that we are coming to see not as private pools (for self-gazing), but a river from which all of us draw water. The activating insight of the environmental movement was that all bodies are materially connected, and that, therefore, so is our physical health. The attention movement is teaching us a parallel lesson: that our attention is connected. That our reaching and receiving and seeking all move through the same systems. That we are in this world together. That what we do with our minds and our time and our senses is what gives us what there actually is—the experience of being here. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 479

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down the book’s core move: attention framed as a commons akin to air and water — the ground of the whole manifesto’s justice claim.
• DEEPTHINKING: The commons-framing of attention — that mental life is a shared river, not private pools — is the load-bearing metaphor the entire program rests on, and the claim whose truth the reader is testing.
• XREF: connects to: Attention is an activity that forms persons, not a resource that platforms act upon — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 68; Attention is a socially produced and politically governed resource, not merely a scarce one. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 19; Attention serves communal needs rather than minority growth interests — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 548 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Attention is the scarce resource that powers the information economy. #contradicts (0.82) — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 8
• Attention is a socially produced and politically governed resource, not merely a scarce one. #corroborates (0.80) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 19
• Attention cannot be treated as a value-neutral economic resource because it shapes ends #corroborates (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 80
• Attention is an activity that forms persons, not a resource that platforms act upon #complicates (0.78) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 68
• The fix for attention problems is collective attentional freedom, not individual span #expands (0.75)
• Attention is socially and materially mediated, not just a scarce mental resource #corroborates (0.75) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 26
• Attention serves communal needs rather than minority growth interests #corroborates (0.72) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 548
• Shared attention builds a collective rather than merely private reality #expands (0.72) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 121
• Attention functions as the ground for ethics, not merely for personal satisfaction. #expands (0.72) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 375