The distraction problem is not short attention spans but the instrumentalization of attention itself.

Evidence

Attention Activists know the deeper truth that has been plowed under by the industrial combines of our attentional monoculture: attention isn’t that narrow, determinate, track-and-trigger “focus” that facilitates frictionless integration of humans and machines (and makes bank for the frackers). It literally is a lot more than that—it is many, many forms of cognitive engagement and sensory awareness; it is faith, love, and life! It is a vast and diverse jungle, not a single, highly engineered cash crop. The work of emancipating human attention from the harness of the frackers involves, among other things, again and again INSISTING on that diversity and complexity—on the range and richness of attentional forms. Otherwise we risk trying to “save” or “protect” what is, in effect, the problem. What could be more tragic and stupid than creating a “society for the conservation of GMO soybeans”? They’re doing fine! If Attention Activists slip unselfconsciously into working to “reclaim” the thin and always-already-instrumentalized form of attention centrally at stake in the attention economy, we will have missed the whole point. So stop worrying about your “attention span,” and start thinking about how to put your hand on the brow of that tired old pig, and reteaching it the long, perfect loveliness of sow. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 496

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the book’s core diagnostic payoff: attention is a diverse jungle, not a single track-and-trigger focus.
• XREF: The GMO-soybean conservation joke parallels arguments that defending a degraded form under attack can perpetuate the problem. — connects to: Distraction is actually unauthorized attention, power-determined; Attention-economy distractions accumulate to erode autonomy and selfhood — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 403

Broader Connections

• Distraction is actually unauthorized attention, power-determined #expands (0.85)
• Attention-economy distractions accumulate to erode autonomy and selfhood #expands (0.78) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 403