MA Research: Attention Economy

Following this post, I looked into the attention economy.

Concept of attention economics was first articulated in 1971 by Herbert A. Simon.

In a bid for efficiency, more people are adopting the use of smart mobile devices. This allows easy access to applications such as GPS for road finding or Netflix for dramas on the go.

Easy access to applications along with the explosion of information at our fingertips has led to a battle for attention. Designers, programmers and tech entrepreneurs are competing to monetize users’ finite attention. It has become a norm to hijack users’ minds and manipulate people into habitual use of their products.





Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google who studied the ethics of human persuasion shared that people are largely unaware of the invisible ways in which a small number of people in Silicon Valley are shaping their lives. The rapid growth of information causes scarcity of attention and the most valuable resource in this information industry is people's attention.

What began as a race to monetize our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children. We live in an environment, this digital city without even realizing it. That city is completely unregulated. Shouldn't there be some zoning laws? - Tristan, 2018, a former design ethicist at Google

Silicon Valley treats your attention span like a valuable commodity. In other words, the more you engage with their products, the more powerfully they control your life. That’s why you can’t turn off your social media accounts – because they’ve got you hooked
- Richmond, 2017

You get a show or a movie you’re really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep,” he said of his No. 1 competitor. Not that he puts too much stock in his rival: And we’re winning!  - Hastings, 2017, CEO of Netflix. Reed Hastings has declared sleep as his number one competitor.

In order to outperform competitors and survive in the industry, companies engage in a zero-sum race to compete for people’s finite attention. To do so, they utilize persuasive techniques to addict consumers. When you use technology, you have goals. When you land on YouTube, it doesn't know any of those goals. It has one goal, which is to make you forget those goals that you have. (Harris, 2017, as cited in Lapowsky, 2018). He believes that companies are exploiting people’s vulnerabilities and this digital community is increasingly dominated by technological addiction, particularly smartphone usage.

It is a version of climate change, just like how people watch the extraordinary changes in their physical environment, they are also watching extraordinary changes in their social, emotional, and cognitive environment. (Steyer, 2018)

Everytime a kid collects coins in Minecraft or catches a Charizard in Pokemon Go, their brain rewards them with a hit of dopamine and they would want more, however when over-stimulated, the dopamine neurons will die. (Lustig, 2018, as cited in Lapowsky, 2018). Facebook’s News Feed algorithm targets the same pleasure centres as children’s games and adults aren’t immune to the changes in the brain as well. There have been callings for social media to be regulated like a cigarette company because of the addictive and harmful properties on people’s brains.

Some children are disciplined not to get addicted to screens but are more adults losing self-control? 
If they are, then smart devices manufacturers may have to implement guidelines for better self control.

Manufacturers such as Apple and Microsoft can help to solve the problem, because keeping people hooked to the screen isn’t their business model. (Tristan, as cited in Thompson, 2017) They can redesign their devices and core interfaces to protect our minds from constant distractions and minimise screen time.

From this research and my inference, I deduced that:

References:

Lapowsky, Issie. “Ethical Tech Will Require a Grassroots Revolution.” Wired, Conde Nast, 8 Feb. 2018, www.wired.com/story/center-for-humane-technology-tech-addiction/.

Lewis, Paul. “'Our Minds Can Be Hijacked': the Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Oct. 2017, www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia.

Thompson, Nicholas. “Social Media Has Hijacked Our Minds. Click Here to Fight It.” Wired, Conde Nast, 8 Nov. 2017, www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them/.