Earlier this week I spoke to Andreas Weigend’s statistics class at Stanford University. In such a setting, one of the points I wanted to make is that attention is not absolutely quantifiable and never will be. Is my full attention numerically the same as yours? How could we find this out? Is my full attention at one time, equal to that at another, or if less, in what proportion? If I am aware that I […]
“Gestalt” as I am using it simply means the whole complex to which you pay attention or have in mind when you pay attention to a person. For now, let us call this potential recipient of your attention the “target.” (There is always a person or person behind everything except purely “natural” objects, and even natural objects we understand only because of interactions with persons, so that such interactions tend to be integrated even into […]
This is a partial look at the ways Person A can pay attention to Person B. Attention can slide among all these possiblities, even in one particular instance of attention paying. Often, we want pretty much all of this (and perhaps even more) from attention, and if we are skilled and lucky enough in our attention seeking we can sometimes get it all. In future I will explore other aspects of this fludity, and how […]
I gave a talk “The Real Nature of the Emerging Attention Economy: Seen As a New Level in the Massively Multiplayer Game Known as Western Culture, ” at BayCHI* on Tuesday July 11. A version of the keynote presentation– JUST THE “SLIDES,” NO SOUND– with a few added explanations, can now be seen as a pdf . [A quicktime movie is also available (just slides without sound) if you want to see something more like […]
What follows is a long extract from an op-ed by Katha Pollitt in the NY Times of July 12, 2006. It illustrates very well (a) that some people want attention more than money, and (b) how (other) people think about it. (I used to read Pollitt’s columns in “The Nation” regularly, and probably still would, if I could spare the attention. The review to which she refers was also published in the Times, and begins […]
See his blog for my comments about the Attention Economy. and a longer interview background by me in his “wiki.”
How did I first hit on the concept of the Attention Economy? That question arose last evening, in the discussion after my talk at BayCHI. * The talk was an expansion on the one on emerging Attention Economy as a new level in the Massively Multiplayer Interactive Game known as Western Culture that I gave at E-tech. A short answer to the question seems useful.** In the early eighties, the idea of an “information revolution” […]
Q. Hi! I’m an italian science writer ….. It would be fantastic if I could get your opinion: do you really think “attention” will be the true value of coming future? Why? A. Yes. I have written about this extensively.. Click on the link “Older writings” to the right and look at earlier entries in this blog. The (very) short answer as to why is because attention from other human beings (or our own) is […]
Some lumber to be erected into an essay. Plank 1 “The present king of France.” This is phrase much beloved for thinking about by (Anglo-American) philosophers, because there is no such animal. But there used to be. In fact, the kings of France were the ultimate feudal lords, the area around Paris having been the very birth place and center of pure feudalism, and the French kings the most successful agglomerators of feudal power. (I […]
Yet may now read the finished, more elegantly set version of my openness piece in the June, 06, First Monday.