Modern attention science was forged as a military-industrial discipline

Evidence

The study of human “vigilance,” and the emergence of a quantitative analysis of human attention in information-management terms, all took shape in a set of subdisciplines known as “human factors research.” Which is to say, research into the way humans were a “factor” in power plants, giant factories, and, above all, the defense industry. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 130

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the genealogy of ‘attention economics’ — how the very metrics we now fight (vigilance, reaction time) got their shape from deoxygenated pilots and radar screens, and what a science of attention would look like if it had been built elsewhere.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School material on instrumental reason — cybernetic attention as measure-for-domination aligns with Adorno’s critique of thought subordinated to technical self-preservation.