Early attention economy thinkers prioritized experiential quality over productive quantification

Evidence

Those who were concerned with the economy of attention between 1850 and 1950 often situated their reflections in an aesthetic order of questioning, which was more interested in the quality of the sensible and intellectual experience than in its quantification in productivist terms. It is this aesthetic dimension that this work will seek to reintroduce into our current discussions on the attention economy. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 57

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s core reorientation: attention economy read through aesthetics rather than productivity.
• XREF: Connects to Frankfurt School’s critique of mass culture and Adorno’s aesthetic theory as another non-productivist reading of attention.