Human attention is being extracted and commodified by an industrial-technological complex.

Evidence

It has to do with our ATTENTION, our essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world. This precious capacity has been channeled, captured, and commodified by an industry of immense technological and financial power. How? Call it “human fracking.” — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 514

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the core definition of the book’s central coinage, ‘human fracking’ — worth pinning down precisely.
• SEED: The comparison between attention extraction and fracking (industrial technique mining a natural depth) is itself an article angle.
• XREF: connects to: Human fracking extracts attentional capacities as industry once extracted physical ones. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 458; An attention-extraction industry converts human care into money and harms everyone. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 480; Industrial tech companies extract and commodify human attention like fracking extracts oil — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 514 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Industrial tech companies extract and commodify human attention like fracking extracts oil #expands (0.95) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 514
• Industrialized attention extraction despoils the shared human spirit as pollution despoils water. #expands (0.90) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 479
• An industry has channeled and commodified human attention like fracking extracts natural resources. #corroborates (0.90)
• The attention industry rests on the idea that attention can be measured and sold. #expands (0.85)
• Large agencies industrialized advertising into an endless machine for attention capture #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 183
• The attention economy functions as an industrial farm of vegetative users #expands (0.80) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 83
• Industrial attention farming originated in military-industrial screen-vigilance and cybernetics. #expands (0.80) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 488
• Attention is becoming the hegemonic resource restructuring material production #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 47
• Commercial exploitation of idle attention is a recent development #qualifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 65