Last July I spoke at the monthly meeting of the SF Bay Area Chapter of computer-human interface subgroup of the Association for Computing Machinery. Yuu can now download a podcast of my talk.
Apr 052007
Feb 272007
Attention is asymmetric at times. It can flow out of the system, as when the living pay attention to the dead. I was very painfully reminded of this just recently. Ten days ago, a very close friend of mine died by her own hand; six days after that I found myself driving down the hill on which I live heading for the cemetery at which I would help choose a plot for her. It was […]
Dec 292006
A key element of an economic system is the nature of the basic transactions, if any. So it might be worthwhile to attempt a brief explanation of the difference between a typical monetary transaction in the familiar (market-money-industrial) economy, and a typical attention transaction, of the type that characterizes the new economy. Here goes. A monetary transaction, normally involves two parties and an actual or implied contract between them (often in the form of a […]
Sep 262006
Here is one more installment of this overly lengthy draft chapter. see the pdf for this third installment. The first installment (click for pdf) The second installment (click for pdf) Again, comments and questions welcome.
Aug 042006
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 […]
Jul 132006
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 […]
Jun 212006
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 […]