Distraction and mediation can be emancipatory rather than merely degrading

Evidence

Calling for a return to attentional modes that are better focused on the real problems affecting us (as opposed to the entertainments that distract us from them), on the books that will enable us to understand them better (rather than the internet by which we are doomed to distraction) or on authentic, present, human relations (removed from all those mediations that cut us off from our roots) – all this may seem a little too nostalgic and moralizing not to be suspicious. Developing a political echology of free-floating attention may on the contrary encourage us to take note of the relational and technological transformations that structure our current epoch, whether we like it or not. Making a certain distraction into an emancipatory force, recognizing the place and the inescapable virtues of mediation in our social relations, looking, even in entertainments, for what may help us to redirect our attention – all this is perhaps more promising for transforming the future than trying to reconstruct it on the past. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 351

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the Frankfurt School dismissal of entertainment and distraction as pure false consciousness — the exact bridge the reader is seeking between that tradition and digital media. — connects to: Distraction enables perception that focused attention forecloses — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 338; Screen-based interaction retains the emotional exposure of bodily copresence. — Karin Knorr Cetina & Urs Bruegger, Global Microstructures: The Virtual…, 103; The distracted digital age prevents the contemplative conclusion that constitutes reason — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 165
• SEED: Angle for an essay: rehabilitating ‘distraction’ as a political resource against the nostalgia trap of media criticism.

Broader Connections

• Distraction enables perception that focused attention forecloses #corroborates (0.88) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 338