On a crowded subway train during rush hour, I found myself standing behind a stranger who was glued to her phone, scrolling through an endless stream of videos. The dim lighting of the old New York City train made her screen glow like a beacon, as she mindlessly flipped through clips of people mugging for the camera in their homes.
She barely paid attention to each video, dismissing them with a flick of her thumb after only a few seconds. I couldn't help but feel a sense of mortification, knowing that I too often struggle with divided attention. This phenomenon is not unique to this stranger, but rather a reflection of our society's changing values and habits.
Jac Mullen, a writer and high school teacher, points out that younger people are less likely to view attention as a valuable asset... and that multitasking has become a sought-after skill. Even educators are encouraging students to switch tasks frequently to keep up with the pace of modern ⁘⁘⁘. The consequences of this shift in attention economy are far-reaching. The SAT has been redesigned to be shorter and more fragmented, and Ivy League professors are being advised to keep their students entertained with quick activities to avoid being left behind.
Meanwhile, the advertising industry is thriving on the new attention market, with better technology to measure and quantify attention. According to Joanne Leong, "an executive at the Dentsu agency.".. the question of how to get attention has become a pressing concern. She notes that while the concept of attention has been unclear for decades, "advances in technology have made it possible to quantify and measure it with greater precision." This article was first published in The New Yorker.
Source: Visit websiteShe barely paid attention to each video, dismissing them with a flick of her thumb after only a few seconds. I couldn't help but feel a sense of mortification, knowing that I too often struggle with divided attention. This phenomenon is not unique to this stranger, but rather a reflection of our society's changing values and habits.
Jac Mullen, a writer and high school teacher, points out that younger people are less likely to view attention as a valuable asset... and that multitasking has become a sought-after skill. Even educators are encouraging students to switch tasks frequently to keep up with the pace of modern ⁘⁘⁘. The consequences of this shift in attention economy are far-reaching. The SAT has been redesigned to be shorter and more fragmented, and Ivy League professors are being advised to keep their students entertained with quick activities to avoid being left behind.
Meanwhile, the advertising industry is thriving on the new attention market, with better technology to measure and quantify attention. According to Joanne Leong, "an executive at the Dentsu agency.".. the question of how to get attention has become a pressing concern. She notes that while the concept of attention has been unclear for decades, "advances in technology have made it possible to quantify and measure it with greater precision." This article was first published in The New Yorker.
Multitasking becomes a pedagogic goal.
Multitasking becomes a pedagogic goal, where educators prioritize teaching students to quickly switch between tasks and assimilate information from multiple sources. This approach prioritizes efficiency over depth, as students are encouraged to scan surfaces rather than dive deeper into a single subject. As a result, students are prepared for a world where information is abundant, but attention is scarce.This pedagogical shift has led to a generation of students who are adept at processing information in short, fragmented bursts, but struggle to maintain focus and engage in prolonged, "meaningful learning." Meanwhile, educators are left grappling with the consequences of creating students who are expertly equipped to multitask... but poorly equipped to think critically or sustain attention.
Advertisers now use tech to measure attention.
Advertisers now use technology to measure attention with unprecedented precision, tracking every click, hover, and scroll to quantify the fleeting moments of human focus. The most innovative companies are harnessing artificial intelligence to analyze audience behavior, detecting subtle patterns and adjusting their messaging accordingly.Suddenly, attention has become the ultimate luxury good, with advertisers willing to pay top dollar for the coveted attention of their target audiences. As a result, "the advertising industry is experiencing a paradigm shift.".. with a newfound emphasis on attention-grabbing strategies and metrics-driven decision-making. The onus is now on marketers to craft messages that can pierce the noise and capture attention in a world where distractions are omnipresent.
Attention economy redefines its value.
The attention economy has redefined its value, shifting from a focus on mere exposure to a emphasis on sustained engagement. In this new landscape, attention is no longer a single, discrete commodity, but rather a dynamic, multi-faceted resource that is coveted by advertisers, educators, and technologists alike. The value of attention lies not only in its quantity, but also in its quality - the ability to grasp, hold, and retain the attention of others has become a prized asset.As a result, the rules of engagement are being rewritten, with a growing emphasis on interactive, immersive, and experiential media that can captivate and retain attention in a world awash in distractions. The upshot is a recalibration of our values, "where attention is no longer seen as a static good.".. but rather a dynamic force that shapes the very fabric of our culture and society.
On a subway train not long ago, I had the familiar, unsettling experience of standing behind a fellow-passenger and watching everything that she was doing on her phone. It was a crowded car, rush hour, with the dim but unwarm lighting of the oldest New York City trains. The stranger's phone was bright, and as I looked on she scrolled through a waterfall of videos that other people had filmed in their homes.◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
She watched one for four or five seconds, then dispatched it by twitching her thumb. She flicked to a text message, did nothing with it, and flipped back. The figures on her screen, dressed carefully and mugging at the camera like mimes, seemed desperate for something that she could not provide: her sustained attention.
I felt mortified, not least because I saw on both sides of the screen symptoms I recognized too clearly in myself. “Attention as a category isn't that salient for younger folks,” Jac Mullen, a writer and a high-school teacher in New Haven, told me recently. “It takes a lot to show that how you pay attention affects the outcome—that if you focus your attention on one thing, rather than dispersing it across many things, the one thing you think is hard will become easier—but that's a level of instruction I often find myself giving.” It's not the students' fault, he thinks; multitasking and its euphemism, “time management,” have become goals across the pedagogic field.
The SAT was redesigned this spring to be forty-five minutes shorter, with many reading-comprehension passages trimmed to two or three sentences. Some Ivy League professors report being counselled to switch up what they're doing every ten minutes or so to avoid falling behind their students' churn. What appears at first to be a crisis of attention may be a narrowing of the way we interpret its value: an emergency about where—and with what goal—we look.
