The attention industry rests on the idea that attention can be measured and sold.
Evidence
Every system of exploitation has an internal logic. For all its complexity, the trillion-dollar human fracking industry is the extreme application of a simple idea: that attention can be quantitatively measured (and, by extension, bought and sold). Recognizing this idea and understanding where it comes from can help us to push back against the catastrophic harms that it has produced. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 121
Categorization
- DEFINE: Gives the core idea underwriting ‘human fracking’: measurability as the precondition for commodification.
- XREF: connects to: Human attention is being extracted and commodified by an industrial-technological complex. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 514; Attention commodification reduces human beings and relationships to quantifiable, saleable things.; Attention can be quantitatively measured and thereby bought and sold. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 121 (+4 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Human attention is being extracted and commodified by an industrial-technological complex. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 514; Attention commodification reduces human beings and relationships to quantifiable, saleable things.; Attention can be quantitatively measured and thereby bought and sold. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 121 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Attention can be quantitatively measured and thereby bought and sold.
#expands(0.95) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 121 - Attention has quality and volitional character invisible to the market
#complicates(0.78) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 345