Fragmented attention is functional for capital, not an accidental side effect

Evidence

The state of reactive panic in which most of us find ourselves is not an accidental side-effect of post-Fordist labour. It is highly functional for capital that our time is not only quantitatively short but qualitatively fragmented, bitty. We are required to live in the condition that Linda Stone has called “continuous partial attention”, where our attention is habitually distributed across multiple communication platforms. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1631

Categorization

• XREF: Builds directly on the earlier silence/noise material about pervasive low-volume informational chatter being hostile noise that serves commercial interests. — connects to: Fragmented attention is functional for capital, not an accident. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1631; Attention’s present-bound nature contradicts the notion of capital accumulation — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 157; Attention extraction is coercion and theft, not a trade-off — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 84 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that psychological fragmentation is deliberately functional for capital — not a bug but an operating requirement — resists easy summary and reframes perpetual distraction as an economic maintenance system.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the review-of-share. No. Not a fit for the three articles.

Broader Connections

• Fragmented attention is functional for capital, not an accident. #corroborates (1.00) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1631
• Attention’s present-bound nature contradicts the notion of capital accumulation #contradicts (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 157
• Attention extraction is coercion and theft, not a trade-off #expands (0.80) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 84
• The economic paradigm distorts our understanding of how attention actually functions #expands (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 75
• Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource #expands (0.75)
• Attention functions as a political economy embedded in specific temporal contexts #expands (0.75) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 25