Life in the Scroll Age
Human attention has become one of the most valuable commodities in the world. There is an ongoing battle to aggregate as much of it as possible.
Over the past two decades, a few champions have emerged, amassing ever-larger digital property, and they now jealously guard their fiefdoms, employing every tactic imaginable to draw people into their walled gardens day after day.
The ‘attention economy’ – the companies whose main business model is to organize and sell human attention and the ecosystem of institutions who leverage these tools to achieve their goals – has spawned entire new industries, ushering in previously unimaginable economic roles and career paths.
A metamorphosis has occurred in the human-social-organism, bringing with it miraculous new capabilities and a host of new problems.
At first, there is a period of uncertainty as we launch into this transformation – people meet it with a mix of excitement and trepidation. After some time, the true costs come into view more clearly, the tradeoffs we make for this new pattern.
And then we struggle to adapt.
The main goal of this collection is to balance a clear-eyed awareness of the downsides of the ‘attention economy’ with ideas that can inspire practical solutions. It features writers, thinkers, and technologists who have been thinking deeply about the kinds of adaptations we need to promote to form a healthy relationship with our new technological capabilities.
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Now more than ever, technology enables the harvesting, aggregation and sale of human attention, turning it into an important modern commodity that has its own growing, dynamic economy, so far generating both miraculous new capabilities and a host of new problems.
This collection contains seven articles and interviews reflecting ongoing efforts and tools to navigate the downsides of the ‘attention economy.’
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Online access to seven essays and interviews on navigating the downsides of the ‘attention economy.’ Purchases non-refundable.