Human fracking describes extracting hard-to-reach attention by industrial chemical-like force

Evidence

And “fracking” is the right word for the underlying dynamic of the attention economy. In the world of fossil fuel extraction, it refers to the (relatively new) technique by which difficult-to-access oil and gas can be brought to the surface and turned into money. How? Instead of just tapping a nice rich gusher of crude sitting in an easy-access, high-pressure geological boil right under the surface, the frackers must suck their now very hard-to-reach bounty out of acres of spongy rock deep in the earth. They pull this off by pumping millions of gallons of high-volume, high-pressure chemical detergent into the ground, which forces the good stuff up to the surface. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 94

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition anchoring the chapter’s central metaphor of ‘human fracking’.
• XREF: connects to: Human fracking extracts attentional capacities as industry once extracted physical ones. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 458