On attention

There’s about a million things grabbing our attention at any given moment nowadays. The amount of ‘content’ we already have might as well be infinite. Nobody could consume it in a lifetime.. and we’re only making more.

One of the main reasons the infinite growth of capitalism is supposed to work is because the growth is not zero-sum. But our attention does seem zero-sum. The cost of attention is time and that is tightly bound.

Maybe there’s some nuance with, like, pure infrastructure or tool making. Perhaps they can save time and allow us to spend less attention on minutiae. But the aesthetics of using them takes attention. Tools are not neutral.

And maybe how we use attention works because our attention is fracturing. Technology has allowed us to find smaller, more nuanced groups that don’t share attention. We still think of ourselves as being in society with each other though. And we’re struggling. There’s a lot of radicalization going on.

But I think there’s potential in ‘smallness’ as a value. Maybe we could shrink our attention to a personal level and give it away to those immediately around us. I guess this is what it means to be in community with other people. It’s probably beyond the scope of my focus now to gather my thoughts around why community is so hard in our society. But I’m tempted.

(One thing that feels weird to me is the commoditization of community. I guess this is part of the neoliberal agenda to commoditize everything, but it feels.. wrong. I get that, under our current systems, there is some need to commoditize in order to survive though. But what’s the limit?)

The same tools that have allowed our attention to fracture has enabled some to build very large audiences. This is probably inevitable and maybe even good. We want to see ‘greatness’. Do the best things always rise to the top? No. God, no. But some of it does. And maybe that’s enough.

A lot of our tools are focused on empowering people to create but the more people creating, the harder it is to share attention. We don’t have the same level of tools for discoverability and can’t with the amount of stuff being made. It’s different from the days of very obvious cultural gatekeepers. The ones today are less obvious and not as entrenched. We can always blame the algorithms.

Maybe I could convince myself the current order is ok. Maybe I should accept that there are pros who really are that much better than everyone else (and it’s not cuz of their access). Maybe it’s ok that there are winners (and the winners continue to take more). Probably thinking about attention at all is the wrong focus— it is not the goal.

But, still, I exist and, so, have a relationship to the way attention is used. My actions in the world use the attention of those around me. I could try and minimize my existence and sometimes (ok— often) this is how I have tried to live. But I don’t think that’s the answer. It also doesn’t seem right to demand attention just cuz, for vanity’s sake. Maybe there’s good and bad ways of using attention. Maybe I’m a moralist.

A lot of things trying to grab our attention feel like distractions. We are constantly barraged by advertisements. Everything is an advertisement. Even good things need advertisements, so it’s not all bad. But so often it plays on our emotions and drums up our desires.. for commerce or glorifying our selves. And maybe that’s the reason this matters: having attention lets you win in the marketplace.

But there are ways of using attention that seem ‘good’. Being able to focus is a skill and we can learn it through using our attention.. meditating, exercising.. all that. Yeah, I probably am a moralist. There’s a Greek word I like, eudaemonia, which basically means human flourishing and I think using our attention for something like that would be good. There’s interesting articles trying to breakdown what it means for our lives. Breaking it into connection, agency, and competency makes sense to me. What if we used attention for cultivating that?

Part of the trouble with trying to think of the best way of doing something is that it tends towards focusing on some sort of hyper-efficiency and I don’t think that should be the goal. We will never be perfect and I’m more interested in those who end up left behind. The more we fracture, the more we try to move forward (eg. techno-futurism), the more we form groups, the more people who are left behind. Ideally we’d have some way of welcoming back. Ideally we’d have grace. But it doesn’t feel like we’re trying to. Equality of opportunity is an American ideal. We’re far from that right now (and probably always have been).

One aspect of computers that feels unique is that they can receive input. It’s possible to listen. With everything being so loud and attention seeking, I like the idea of making things that listen. I’d like to think I’m good at listening. But maybe that is more about using attention than receiving it. Though maybe it’d be possible to build a model of attention based on reciprocity. Probably that’s how it works in smaller scenarios, but I doubt it scales.

Maybe there’s room for all of this. To listen, promote ‘good’ things, and not take things too seriously. Maybe that’s the way I can use any attention I find.

Maybe.