The computer screen commands even more focused attention than television

Evidence

To give Thuerk his due, he did see, just as clearly as Benjamin Day or other pioneering attention merchants had, that there was value to all those eyeballs focused on the same thing. No one remarked it at the time, but the mind tended to fix on this new screen even more attentively than to television. Such a mind was therefore in the state most naturally primed for being sold something. But it would be another generation before the commercial potential of the computer would be manifest. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 665

Categorization

• CANDY: A quotable, surprising nugget: the earliest screen commanded attention even more reliably than TV — an elevator-grade fact.
• XREF: connects to: Early television commanded trance-like, immersive attention rivaling cinema. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 438; The remote control actually reduced viewers’ conscious control over attention — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 634; Most people equate attention with screen-based task focus — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 153 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Ambient TV’s defining aesthetic is its dispensability of attention #contradicts (0.80) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 592
• Most people equate attention with screen-based task focus #complicates (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 153
• Screen culture trains us to misperceive attention as singular and task-oriented #expands (0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 204
• Watching engaging television triggers measurable neurological relaxation and hemisphere switching #contradicts (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1108
• Smartphone screens monopolize attention formation toward a single engineered kind #exemplifies (0.72) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 201
• Video games monopolize attention automatically without requiring intentional focus #qualifies (0.70) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 682