“The reason much of social media feels so toxic is it has been built for speed, virality and attention grabbing rather than for context and accuracy.” – Kara Swisher
Our attention has become a commodity. Websites and apps, whose worth depends on their traction, calculated in the number of visits and their length, compete for it, trade it. To pay attention is to direct our focus towards one thing at the detriment of others. While an inherently selective process, it doesn’t axiomatically involve premeditation. At least on our part. At least that’s what the Internet’s attention-economy is counting on; the ability to steer our minds. To reclaim control, vigilance is of the essence, consciousness is essential. We must decide where to concentrate our energy, what is deserving of our sustained attention.
"The seemingly innocuous features we now take for granted on social media —the likes and heart button that signals affection, the swipe gestures that refresh the screen with new information, the streak counts that tally exchanges with friends, the infinity scrolls of stuff— are variations of psychological-conditioning techniques pioneered by slot machine makers. " – Nicholas Carr
Against technological determinism, resistance takes the shape of conscious refusal. Refusal to comfortably sink in passive surfing. Refusal to allow fragments of information float around without context. Refusal to let our behaviours drift, swayed by persuasive design. That little red dot notification at once signaling urgency and arousing curiosity. The number that accompanies it, suggesting chaos and daring you to get down to 0 as fast as you can. The blue hyperlink enjoining you to wander further and further, down the proverbial rabbit-hole. Refusal isn’t only about saying no. It’s also emancipating, a means to extol your agency, to assert your autonomy.
“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” – Nicholas Carr
Capitalism hinges on consumption. Let’s take a moment to consider the actions implied by the last word of that sentence. To consume simultaneously conjures ingestion (food), destruction (fire), acquisition (goods), strain (energy, resources). While to be consumed is to be enthralled. Here, your attention is completely relinquished to that which consumes you.
The attention economy calls on both: it wants you to mindlessly, impulsively, expeditiously scoff vast amounts of data while holding you rapt. To sabotage: pause. That is your power. Hold your attention. Sit with your digital encounter. Contemplate it. Ruminate. Meditate. Even go as far as sleeping on it.
“If it’s attention (deciding what to pay attention to) that makes our reality, regaining control of it can also mean the discovery of new worlds and new ways of moving through them” – Jenny Odell
If you’ve been paying attention 😉 by now, it is becoming clearer that what the attention-economy is after is not our capacity to think deeply. In fact, it fears it. When you consume fragmented, precipitated bits of information, context gets neglected, connections fade, concentration wanes.
You are in a state of inattentive attention. Like the 24-hours news cycle dedicated to the collection of endless stories, you move on to the next item eschewing your responsibility to elaborate a thoughtful response, to imagine an alternative future. How à propos for a system bound to the status quo.
"But, successful collective refusals enact a second-order level of discipline and training, in which individuals align with each other to form flexible structures of agreement that can hold open the space for refusal. This collective alignment emerges as a product of intense individual self-discipline –like a crowd of Thoreaus refusing in tandem. In so doing, the ‘third space’ –not of retreat, but of refusal, boycott, and sabotage– can become a spectacle of noncompliance that registers on the larger scale of the public" – Jenny Odell
If who holds our attention holds our stories, and who holds our stories holds our future, to come together in an act of attention reclamation does more than asserting our sovereignty over our digital behaviours. Such a movement makes possible a future where we dictate how our stories are told, not homogeneously predicated by technological predispositions, but in a myriad of ways, each representative of our cultures, traditions and dreams, opening space for stories which currently go untold, because they demand our undivided attention, prefiguring a more just and sustainable future, online and offline.
You are in a state of inattentive attention. Like the 24-hours news cycle dedicated to the collection of endless stories, you move on to the next item eschewing your responsibility to elaborate a thoughtful response, to imagine an alternative future. How à propos for a system bound to the status quo.
The Slow Internet Café by Sam Kronick
The Consortium for Slower Internet
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
The Space We Hold by Tiffany Hsiung
Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay