——Part I of a review of (and riff on) Andrew Keen’s the cult of the amateur. A hundred and eleven years ago, the “modern” Olympic games were born, emphasizing what could have been criticized as a conservative “cult of the amateur.” There were strict rules that only pure amateurs could compete, which meant, of course, that only people of independent means could enter. This neatly kept out representatives of the “great unwashed” or, in other […]
Pay attention! This is IMPORTANT, not just my usual blather! In response to an earlier post of mine, Paul Salomone writes, in part: “…it’s not just that ALL people need to have a more equal share of the attention wealth, but IMPORTANT people and ideas (read: necessary for the healthy and happy functioning of global society) do even more so.” I don’t think this demand makes real sense, understandable though it may be. Meanwhile, in […]
Friendship might be defined as a state of more-or-less mutual attention paying. From little acts of attention, including times when you just are together, talking, walking, or engaging in some joint activity your minds get into sync so that you can align easily (that is pay attention) to what the other is saying or doing, feeling or thinking. Long friendship makes attention all that much easier and full. No wonder people clamor for friends, and […]
Paul Salomone has posted some interesting and I think valid comments about social justice in an Attention Economy. The issue is how do we go about equalizing what has become most important — attention from others. In an economy based on material things and money, governments have certain powers to help equalize things, even though with varying problems and difficulties. They can offer welfare, social security, require a decent minimum wage and provide various public […]
It probably does no good at this late stage, but let me cry foul one more time. I coined the term “Attention Economy” twenty years ago to refer to a completely new kind of economic system — one not based on material goods nor money but rather on the passing around of what is both unavoidably scarce and desirable in unlimited amounts, namely ….TA DAA… the attention that can come only from other human beings. […]
Recently, I happened on an obituary in the NY Times for Rudolph Arnheim, who died at 102. It turned out he had done interesting work on the psychology of visual thinking and visual attention. Since, I have been reading some of his essays. One point he makes [New Essays in the Psychology of Art, p. 78] is that when we are fully absorbed in something, we do not notice time passing. If you are particularly […]
In the past three or four years, the Internet has become vastly important for politics. Bloggers like “Daily Kos” help determine how “the grass-roots” will respond to actions by Congress or the President. Move-On members send petitions on this and that, quite frequently. Listservs pass around messages to “Call your Congressperson;” specific candidates’ campaigns build support and receive contributions and obtain volunteers through vast numbers of e-mails they send out. And so on. Similar things […]
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times , “A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?” novelist Mark Helprin proposed stretching the already incredibly long period of copyright (the life of the author plus seventy years) to…well….always. Now Google is again facing opposition from publishers for scanning in books in university libraries. In the unlikely event that anyone would honor copyright in another few decades, authors would be still be most foolish to […]
“There is no such thing as bad publicity.” Does this hold? What does it have to do with attention. How does it relate to being an object rather than a subject? 1. Starting out in life, as an infant, everyone absolutely requires attention, and almost all infants show signs of wanting it. If, later in life, some people prefer to be absolutely ignored, that can usually be taken as a sign of severe mental illness, […]
You are reading this right now. I know you are. That gives the impression that I am paying attention to you personally at the moment. But of course that is a mere illusion. Really I am not. I may know you, but I very well may not. I may know nothing about you other than that you are evidently reading this, or hearing it read, or perhaps you memorized it and are now reciting it […]