Odell’s response to the attention economy is depth, not redirection or withdrawal

Evidence

As a response to the attention economy, the argument for ethical persuasion happens on a two-dimensional plane that assumes that attention can only be directed this way or that way. I am not as interested in that plane as I am interested in a disciplined deepening of attention. While I am all for legal restrictions on addictive technology, I also want to see what’s possible when we take up William James’s challenge and bring attention back, over and over again, to an idea “held steadily before the mind until it fills the mind.” I am personally unsatisfied with untrained attention, which flickers from one new thing to the next, not only because it is a shallow experience, or because it is an expression of habit rather than will, but because it gives me less access to my own human experience. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 420

Categorization

• XREF: Directly defeats the misreading that Odell recommends withdrawal — she explicitly contrasts her depth-project with merely relocating attention to ‘this way or that way.’ — connects to: The response to attention exploitation must be affirmative vision, not mere resistance.