Workplace access restrictions function as organizational control over worker attention.

Evidence

As Broadbent notes, the adoption of mobile phones in workplaces has challenged attempts by industrial capitalism to control the flow of workers’ attention: “[R]estrictions of access to certain websites and to mobile phones and other communication channels are therefore to be understood as attempts to preserve the boundaries between social spheres and as forms of organizational control on attention” (Broadbent 2012, p. 132). — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 32

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s surveillance/attention platform work — workplace attention control as a form of discipline. — connects to: Instrumented workplaces act as testbeds for extending instrumentarian control to all of society — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1356; Workplace friendliness programs extend social control into private impulses — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 115; Leaders’ attention signals where subordinates should direct theirs. — Thomas Davenport & John Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding…, 20 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Echoes the trees-as-infrastructure piece in reverse: here infrastructure restricts attention rather than enabling growth.

Broader Connections

• Leaders’ attention signals where subordinates should direct theirs. #corroborates (0.85) — Thomas Davenport & John Beck, The Attention Economy, 20
• Workplace friendliness programs extend social control into private impulses #corroborates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 115