One historically contingent model of attention colonized all others via advertising and military uses

Evidence

Our impoverished understanding of attention is like that. Sure, Candy Crush Saga involves “attention.” But that is not the only kind of attention in the universe. And it is certainly not the most important kind (remember Weil’s invocation of faith? and love?). The problem is that the Candy Crush kind of attention (visual, vigilant, reflexive, cybernetic, quantified) proved IMMENSELY USEFUL to the advertising industry and the military—so useful that it seeped into every other part of our lives. Educators began to think of attention in these terms. So did parents. Even artists. And the computer programmers who shaped the architecture of the digital spaces where more and more people—from the mid-nineties through the aughts and into the present day—spent more and more of their time. Now, when a person says they are trying to “pay better attention,” it is more likely than not that they mean this kind of attention—the kind that measures their ability to stay with (mostly screen-based) tasks. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 170

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the instrumental, quantified model of attention by contrast, calling it the ‘Candy Crush kind’ (visual, vigilant, reflexive, cybernetic, quantified).