Attention merchants profit by colonizing previously uncommercialized spaces of awareness.
Evidence
As we shall see, the winning strategy from the beginning has been to seek out time and spaces previously walled off from commercial exploitation, gathering up chunks and then slivers of our un-harvested awareness. Within living memory it was thought that families would never tolerate the intrusion of broadcasting in the home. An earlier generation would find it astonishing that, without payment or even much outcry, our networks of family, friends, and associates have been recruited via social media to help sell us things. Now, however, most of us carry devices on our bodies that constantly find ways to commercialize the smallest particles of our time and attention. Thus, bit by bit, what was once shocking became normal, until the shape of our lives yielded further and further to the logic of commerce—but gradually enough that we should now find nothing strange about it. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 17
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s platform/surveillance history interest — the frontier-colonization dynamic recurs across all media platform histories. — connects to: Business models now give goods away free in exchange for user attention.; Attention merchants now shape the course of human lives and futures — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1143; Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Attention merchants now shape the course of human lives and futures
#expands(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1143 - Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers
#exemplifies(0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43 - Attention can be monetized either by charging admission or by reselling it.
#expands(0.82) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 871 - Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity
#corroborates(0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24 - Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal
#qualifies(0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225 - Colonized countries feed raw data into a value chain whose profits accrue to colonizers
#exemplifies(0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 333 - Commercial exploitation of idle attention is a recent development
#contradicts(0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 65 - Early web attention circulated person-to-person without commercial resale, undercutting attention merchants.
#qualifies(0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 919