Television split spectacle into valueless cultural product and valuable captured attention
Evidence
With the birth of commercial television, the technostructure appended a boisterous attention market to its labour market. The dual nature of labour was now coupled with the dual nature of the spectacle: on the one hand, a cultural product with large experiential value but no exchange value, and on the other the captured attention of viewers with substantial exchange value but no experiential value. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 155
Categorization
- DEFINE: Sharply defines the dual nature of attention-as-commodity, a core conceptual distinction the reader’s platform feudalism thesis builds on.
- XREF: Parallels Marx’s dual nature of labor (use value/exchange value), applying it to attention - a link the reader will want to trace forward into digital feudalism. — connects to: The counterculture was co-opted when networks traded relevant programming for viewer attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 584; Television’s attention capture drove 1950s conformity without state enforcement — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 457; Broadcast television absorbed the political energies of the 1960s into passive viewing — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 568 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- The counterculture was co-opted when networks traded relevant programming for viewer attention
#exemplifies(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 584 - Broadcast television absorbed the political energies of the 1960s into passive viewing
#exemplifies(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 568 - Mass television delivered shared experience without the collective exaltation of a rally
#expands(0.82) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 456 - Television’s attention capture drove 1950s conformity without state enforcement
#expands(0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 457 - Educational TV succeeded by deliberately imitating commercial attention-grabbing techniques
#exemplifies(0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 575