The response to attention exploitation must be affirmative vision, not mere resistance.
Evidence
As a response to the attention economy, the argument for ethical persuasion happens on a two-dimensional plane that assumes that attention can only be directed this way or that way. I am not as interested in that plane as I am interested in a disciplined deepening of attention. While I am all for legal restrictions on addictive technology, I also want to see what’s possible when we take up William James’s challenge and bring attention back, over and over again, to an idea “held steadily before the mind until it fills the mind.” I am personally unsatisfied with untrained attention, which flickers from one new thing to the next, not only because it is a shallow experience, or because it is an expression of habit rather than will, but because it gives me less access to my own human experience. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 420 (
#epitomizes, via linked claim)
We want to be wary of this dynamic, but we won’t dismiss every shared experience that’s been sucked up, pixelated, and tapped out by the frackers. We work in this world—the one utterly permeated by society-scale digital platforms. We are going to defeat the human frackers in THIS world, not some fantasy world where everyone spends all day making sourdough bread or walking along the beach. Like any underground resistance, we will use the very tools that are harming us to effect the revolution. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 325 (
#qualifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Attention can be deliberately wielded, not just reclaimed; Resistance must use the same platforms that extract attention — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 325; Odell’s response to the attention economy is depth, not redirection or withdrawal — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 420 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Odell’s response to the attention economy is depth, not redirection or withdrawal
#epitomizes(0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 420 - Attention can be deliberately wielded, not just reclaimed
#expands(0.75) - Resistance must use the same platforms that extract attention
#qualifies(0.75) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 325 - Attention is learned, not innate, so it can be retrained
#expands(0.72) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 198 - Politically resisting attention capitalism requires sabotaging ratings systems
#contradicts(0.70) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 167