Social interaction proved a stronger attention lure than traditional content

Evidence

AOL had, over the 1990s, decisively proven that the surest allure of the new computer networks was social—the prospect of interacting with other people. The point is more profound than it may at first appear. The discovery that traditional content was not the only basis for capturing attention, that our friends and acquaintances (or at least representations of them)—to say nothing of the attractive strangers we might hope to meet—that they, too, might have the same potential was nothing less than revolutionary. Of course it seems obvious in retrospect: however much of our attention we may devote to television, most of us pay at least as much, if not more, to friends, family, and co-workers, particularly if all our various means of communicating with them (texts, phone calls, etc.) are taken into account. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 723

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that interpersonal attention rivaling media attention was ‘virgin territory’ is a genuinely paradigm-shifting reframe of twentieth-century media history — the idea that the social sphere was the last great uncommercialized attention reservoir.
• XREF: connects to: Conversational interfaces are prized because casual talk renders experience as surplus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 811; Interpersonal relationships were the final unconquered frontier for attention merchants — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 724; Social networks disguised attention capture beneath promises of connection. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 973 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Social media turned attention capture into mutual self-display at unprecedented scale #corroborates (0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1062
• Social networks disguised attention capture beneath promises of connection. #complicates (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 973