Human attention went largely untapped commercially before the nineteenth century.

Evidence

His early career as a preacher may seem an incongruous footnote to the one that would make his name, but it is in fact quite significant if considered in the larger history of attention capture. Before the nineteenth century, human attention was a largely untapped resource in relation to its eventual commercial and political applications. One reason was the lack of advertising such as we would recognize it today. Yes, there have always been commercial notices and signs; the Greeks and Romans used them to indicate wares for sale, as did merchants in China. Some of the graffiti covering the walls of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius, turn out to be advertisements for erotic services. But as we shall see, there is a crucial difference between this sort of signage and the industrialized capture of attention. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the later chapters on modern mass media; connects to the reader’s attention-industry history project as the baseline against which all later capture is measured. — connects to: Attention management predates modernity and originates in classical rhetoric. — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 5; The attention industry did not exist a century ago — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 14; Mass-scale attention harvesting began with advertising in the 1890s-1920s — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Commercial exploitation of idle attention is a recent development #complicates (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 65
• Mass-scale attention harvesting began with advertising in the 1890s-1920s #qualifies (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24