Attention-maximizing technologies can reduce rather than increase user control over attention

Evidence

All this leads to a highly counterintuitive point: technologies designed to increase our control over our attention will sometimes have the very opposite effect. They open us up to a stream of instinctive selections, and tiny rewards, the sum of which may be no reward at all. And despite the complaints of the advertising industry, a state of distracted wandering was not really a bad one for the attention merchants; it was far better than being ignored. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 635

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attention and technology co-evolve through reciprocal causation — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 534; Digital technologies replace human attentional energy with electrical energy. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 195; Apps collect data beyond user control while framing collection as enhanced experience — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 517 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Smartphone screens monopolize attention formation toward a single engineered kind #expands (0.82) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 201
• Technology-enabled attention extraction both creates the crisis and reveals attention’s true importance #qualifies (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 265