Digital technologies replace human attentional energy with electrical energy.

Evidence

As they add a new stratum of global, instantaneous and infinitely modular communications to the mediasphere, digital technologies have started to drastically restructure every level of the global economy. From the point of view that interests us here, this restructuring rests on the simple principle of ELECTRIFICATION OF ATTENTION: ‘computers replace attentional energy with electrical energy’. While the mass media introduce over-economies of scale as they take us from one-to-one discussion to the attentional aggregation of millions of individuals, the magic of search engines has enabled us to make attention hyper-savings, infinitely enriching our lives as they electrically execute searches in a fraction of a second which would have taken us days, months, and sometimes years of effort. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 195

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core concept ‘electrification of attention’ that structures the whole chapter.
• XREF: connects to: Attention-maximizing technologies can reduce rather than increase user control over attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 635; Attention modulates in discrete samples just as digital media do — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 383; Google engineered proprietary chips to slash the energy cost of machine intelligence. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 592

Broader Connections

• Attention-maximizing technologies can reduce rather than increase user control over attention #corroborates (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 635
• Attention modulates in discrete samples just as digital media do #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 383