Attention to neighbors precedes communication, which requires caring.

Evidence

I suggested “communication,” but days later, his clarification stayed with me. After all, communication requires us to care enough to make the effort. I thought about how it’s possible to move to a place without caring about who or what is already there (or what was there before), interested in the neighborhood only insofar as it allows one to maintain your existing or ideal lifestyle and social ties. Like Buber’s “I-It” relationship, a newcomer might only register other people and things in the neighborhood to the extent that they seem in some way useful, imagining the remainder as (at best) inert matter or (at worst) a nuisance or inefficiency. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 457

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Buber’s ‘I-It’ as a framework for instrumental perception of neighbors — key to the attention-as-world-constitution argument.
• XREF: Buber’s I-It vs I-Thou parallels how Odell frames non-instrumental care; connects to Martin Buber’s I and Thou and to the reader’s interest in how filter bubbles shape social reality.