The Attention Economy - How They Addict Us

Please visit Tristan Harris' project Time Well Spent: http://www.timewellspent.io/ (He is, more than anyone I know, fighting against the unethical practices of Silicon Valley).

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FURTHER READING
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"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman: https://geni.us/aotd

"Present Shock" by Douglas Rushkoff: https://geni.us/presentshock

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr: https://geni.us/shallows

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew Crawford: https://geni.us/digitalindividual

https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.ww5uol7hq
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MUSIC:

"Rain (Instrumental)" by JayProd
"The Time to Run (Finale)" by Dexter Britain
"Building Thoughts" by Dexter Britain
"A Closing Statement" by Dexter Britain
"Fly" by Julian Avila (Check him out: https://soundcloud.com/julian_avila)
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ARTISTS:

Jon-Michael Frank: http://www.jonmichaelfrank.com/ (I own one of his comics. Love it.)
John Holcroft: http://www.johnholcroft.com/
Jean Jullien: https://www.jeanjullien.com/
Laurie Lipton: http://www.laurielipton.com/
Pawel Kuczynski: http://www.pawelkuczynski.com/

This video features a segment of Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death." It's a book I highly recommend, especially if you found this video interesting.

Hmmm. That's not a bad photo. Laura posted

a new video from John Oliver.

Look at all these other videos. A new follower

on Twitter. A few hot takes from the

debate last night. This guy has a Wikipedia page.

Oh!

He grew up near New York! I grew up near New York.

Let's catch up on Instagram. A text from mom.

A text from dad. Hey dad, watch this kid shoot a

firework at his dad. Send! ... Holy shit it's

been 40 minutes! Every time I look up

after being stuck in my phone like this

I know it's going to happen again, and

most of the time I don't feel great about it.

This is what it's like being a part of

the attention economy. [Music]

In his famous 1997 Wired article,

"Attention Shoppers," theoretical physicist

Michael Goldhaber states that the

economics of industrialized nations,

especially that of the United States,

have dramatically shifted. An increasing

number of workers are no longer involved

directly in the production

transportation and distribution of

material goods, and instead earn their

living managing or dealing with

information in some form. Most call this

an information economy, but he rejects

that label by definition economics is

the study of how a society uses its

scarce resources, and with the internet

our scarcity is definitely not

information any piece of information you

want; what products should you buy, what

restaurants should you go to, who's this guy,

guy, all that is literally seconds away.

So what does Goldhaber think flows

through cyberspace and is scarce and

desirable? As he explains, no one would

put anything on the internet without the

hope of obtaining some. It's called

attention, and the economy of attention,

not information, is the natural economy

of cyberspace. And he's right! Information

consumes our attention, making it a

scarce resource. We only have so many

hours that we can glue ourselves to

technology, and the infinity of

information it presents. We live in this

attention economy, where you succeed by

getting people to spend the most time.

To allocate their attention to you or your

product, and you dominate the economy if

you can make people develop a habit

where they spend time. To get their attention

and hold it. It's why YouTube videos have titles like this,

{Blank}

why traditional news sources are struggling,

and why BuzzFeed is successful. It's why

politics is no longer so much about

policy, as it is about who can bring the

most attention to themselves or someone

else. It's why netflix has autoplay, why

most social networks have an endless

scroll. Look at advertisements from Old

Spice or Mountain Dew. Their commercials

are just trying to get you to look at

them.

Forget information. It's all about

relevance. ACTRESS: Don't thank me! Thank the

savings. ANNOUNCER: You can't skip this Geico ad,

because it's already over. But what about my

my problem at the beginning of the video?

Lost in the sea of clicking and

scrolling around, distracting mostly

unfulfilling

content? Surely that's a

self-inflicted issue. I should be able to

close all of these tabs and apps that

distract me. Well, it's not that simple.

Social networks run the attention

economy. They need you on their site

constantly, to succeed as a business, to

click and see ads. They need your

attention to keep this revenue loop open.

Facebook designs its algorithm to show

you everything it thinks will grab your

attention: your past history scrolling,

where you've clicked, something extremely

depressing, or uplifting in other words...

they've psychologically engineered a lot

of their websites to literally fight

against your brain. They want to keep you

from closing anything. And they're really

fucking good at it! These social networks

have hundreds of years of psychological

studies in linguistics, sound, design, and

social behavior at their disposal. The

perfect ding sound, the red notification,

the like, the love. It's an endless flow

of rewarding stimuli that keep you

coming back. So what is the effect this

has on us over the course of a day? Well,

that depends on what you want to do with

your day. And you may be thinking, "who are

you to tell us what's good for humans?"

Well, I don't mean to be an arbiter of

truth or claim to know what's good for

humans, but this constant distraction has

a pretty drastic effect on day to day

life. Take for example a text message it

seems like a simple distraction, but it

undoubtedly breaks our focus on whatever

we're doing. Well, a study by Gloria Mark

at UC Irvine, found that it takes us on

average, 23 minutes to resume focus after

any interruption! Even worse we do two

different tasks before coming back to

our original project. And every time

you're interrupted, you self interrupt

over the next hour more often than if

you hadn't been interrupted. Now add the

fact that we check our phones on average

221 times a day, or every 4.3 minutes.

It's scary in many ways, not because

you're not getting more quote, "important

stuff" done, but because you're not

necessarily living your life how you

want to live your life. You're losing the

ability to make choices that matter to you.

We're just living for that quick

burst of dopamine that comes from liking,

swiping and refreshing. Any feeling of

banality or loneliness is quickly replaced

by picking up a device, or as

Louis CK

says: "You never feel completely sad

or completely happy.

You just feel kind of satisfied with

your product, and then you die."

So it's the combination of these two

powerful forces: the attention-getters

and the attention engineers, that can be

extremely dangerous.

The dystopian visions of two of the

world's greatest thinkers: George Orwell

and Aldous Huxley

I think, described this point fairly well.

What Orwell feared were those who would

ban books.

What Huxley feared was that there would

be no reason to ban a book,

for there would be no one who would want to read one.

Orwell feared those who would

deprive us of information. Huxley feared

those who would give us so much that we

would be reduced to passivity and

egotism. Orwell feared the truth would be

concealed from us. Huxley feared the

truth would be drowned in a sea of

irrelevance. As Huxley remarked in, Brave New World Revisited:

"The civil libertarians and rationalists

who are ever on alert

to oppose tyranny failed

to take into account man's almost

infinite appetite for distractions."

I think both of these can happen at the

same time. I think the attention economy

relates very closely to Huxley's vision.

Now there are two main actions you can

take on this idea that we're descending

into Huxley's nightmare. You either

completely opt out of the system in

which case you might be completely

overridden with fear from the

consequences of unplugging: not being in

on a joke, not being the first one to know something,

and not feeling caught up

with friends, or you figure out how to

keep the current system from becoming

Huxley's nightmare. But before we go

further on that idea, I think we should

take a step back. I've emphasized the bad

stuff about all of this. It's not like

the attention-getters and engineers

haven't done a lot of good. Think of the

information that you can get from any

number of devices in seconds. You can

figure out the reputation of a

restaurant. You no longer need a map in

most places. You can track a storm

immediately and make plans to evacuate.

Your ability to discover new opinions in

great art, music, TV and movies is

infinitely higher now than it was before the internet.

You can tell your friends that

you're in an emergency with the click of a button.

You can invite all of them to a party

in minutes. One of the

most important things social media has

done, is bring important issues to the

forefront. A lot that have been looked

over for a long time.

WOMAN: "We have institutional racism in this country."

MAN: "climate change!"

MAN: "And the problem seems to be getting worse,"

and worse and more." JOHN OLIVER: "discriminating against

gay people is surprisingly legal in much

of the country." ANNOUNCER: "his sentence is insanely short."

The internet, in short has given everyone a voice.

And that's great. We see

all of these issues constantly now, and

our awareness helps us push for policy

changes we want to see. Now, a lot of

people don't think anyone is close

anymore, because of the internet. I'm on

the fence about this one. Certainly these

networks increase our overall number of

acquaintances, which means a lot more

peripheral relationships and small talk.

And for many there is also a reduction

in the quantity of intimate interaction.

The internet makes it so easy not to go

out and do things with friends.

Oftentimes we settle for the online

versions of them, as writer Andrew

Sullivan says, "we reduce our friends to

some outlines, a Facebook friend, an

Instagram photo, a text message in a

controlled and sequestered world that

exists largely free of sudden eruptions,

or encumbrances of actual human interaction.

We become each other's

contacts, efficient shadows of ourselves."

But the flip side is that the Internet

allows us to be in contact with everyone

that's ever been a part of our life, and

for some of us that's great. We can

exchange things we like with our friends

faster than ever. We can share parts of

ourselves that may have never come out

in person. We can talk to friends or

family from across the world. Should any

of this technology ever replace

in-person face-to-face conversation?

I'm going to give that a strong NO. But I'm

torn about all of this. The attention

economy as it is now, still causes

infinite distractions, whether they're good or bad.

So where do we go from here?

Well, for the attention-getters and

attention engineers, will they decide to

exploit unconscious human psychology for

the eternal loop of revenue and power?

Or will they take a human first approach?

One rooted in substance, respect, one that cares

about you as a human, and not

as a source of money. That sees your time

as valuable, and helps you focus on what

you want to do. And then there's people

like me, who have to try our best to

fight against easy amusement. Who have to

read beyond headlines, read long form

journalism, and get a handle on different

areas of study. If we don't, we're easy pickings

for the attention economy.

One that capitalizes on the uninformed,

easily emotional individual, who gets

sucked into things by their basest instincts.

And of course, it's important to

unplug every once in a while. We have

to enjoy the most communal moments as

much as we can, because the rest of our

time is not spent doing those things.

Otherwise we'll keep descending into

Aldous Huxley's nightmare, living in a

world where we see everything, but do

nothing. Where we don't spend time how we

want to spend it and instead continue to

amuse ourselves to death.

Hey everyone thanks for watching. I'm

absolutely fascinated by that topic. I

would love to know what you guys think.

Let me know in the comments.

I realize how funny it is to make this

pitch after this video, but if you like

my content, I would love your support on

patreon. If all my subscribers pledged $1

I could do this full-time, which would be

amazing. I really care about the work

that I do here, and... PING (Text message sound)