My Attention Is Not For Free
Our Attention Quantified – Our Attention Commodified – Our Attention Targeted – Our Attention Disrupted.
In the 1970s, Herbert Simon stated that: “When information is abundant, attention becomes the scarce resource.”
Attention is currency, cognitive control, and a choice of orientation that sculpts our identity. Attention is, in a sense, morality, a personal guidance system with hierarchies and priorities. An interface of sorts that shapes our perception. Attention is a decision that creates a habit. Attention is memory.
But what is this sense of attention? How does it “feel” when we select, focus, observe, and connect with our object of interest?
I found my answer in the words of the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis: “Doubtless for each one of us there is a separate, irreplaceable sense which if one does not find it and isolate it on time and cohabit with it later, to fill it with visible acts, one is lost.” – The Little Seafarer.
In the digital environment, where attention drives a critical percentage of the global economy, the combinatorial inflation in communication, with the amount of data we encounter daily, contributes silently to the emergence and acceptance of a culture of competition over the microseconds of our attention.
Perhaps it is appropriate to reflect on how the practices of quantifying and commodifying our attention, constitute a contemporary social and value issue that we are called to face.
The purpose of the “My Attention Is Not For Free” initiative, in collaboration with health and education agencies, is to inform and raise public awareness on issues related to attention in the digital environment of abundant information.
The images in this series, represent spontaneous embraces with the reality of places I consider home. Athens, Lemnos, and New York sparked and shaped my attention, each in their own way, overlapping in my memories, fusing a sense of timelessness and non-locality into a kaleidoscope of familiar curiosities.
Our Attention Quantified – Our Attention Commodified – Our Attention Targeted – Our Attention Disrupted.
In the 1970s, Herbert Simon stated that: “When information is abundant, attention becomes the scarce resource.”
Attention is currency, cognitive control, and a choice of orientation that sculpts our identity. Attention is, in a sense, morality, a personal guidance system with hierarchies and priorities. An interface of sorts that shapes our perception. Attention is a decision that creates a habit. Attention is memory.
But what is this sense of attention? How does it “feel” when we select, focus, observe, and connect with our object of interest?
I found my answer in the words of the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis: “Doubtless for each one of us there is a separate, irreplaceable sense which if one does not find it and isolate it on time and cohabit with it later, to fill it with visible acts, one is lost.” – The Little Seafarer.
In the digital environment, where attention drives a critical percentage of the global economy, the combinatorial inflation in communication, with the amount of data we encounter daily, contributes silently to the emergence and acceptance of a culture of competition over the microseconds of our attention.
Perhaps it is appropriate to reflect on how the practices of quantifying and commodifying our attention, constitute a contemporary social and value issue that we are called to face.
The purpose of the “My Attention Is Not For Free” initiative, in collaboration with health and education agencies, is to inform and raise public awareness on issues related to attention in the digital environment of abundant information.
The images in this series, represent spontaneous embraces with the reality of places I consider home. Athens, Lemnos, and New York sparked and shaped my attention, each in their own way, overlapping in my memories, fusing a sense of timelessness and non-locality into a kaleidoscope of familiar curiosities.