[iDC] Re A primer on the Attention (Centered) Economy
Michael H Goldhaber
michael at goldhaber.org
Tue Oct 27 08:32:51 UTC 2009
Mark, thanks for your interesting questions. I will attempt answers to
them in reverse order, starting with the easiest:
> 3. Does this mean that Balloon Boy (or his dad) really will get his
> own reality TV show?
Of course. He already has, even if not in the form he (dad) wanted.
His trial, if there is one, will certainly focus attention back on the
family, and if he is able to play his cards right, he could get
considerably more attention out of this, even after a jail sentence.
> 2. I'm not quite sure where the mode whereby attention is produced
> fits into Goldhaber's account. Is the assumption here that the fact
> that everyone pays attention to Balloon Boy can be explained as a
> demand-side phenomenon -- that the mechanism of commercial media
> operates merely as a transparent, neutral, and ultimately dispenable
> mechanism to connect an "attention entrepreneur" with a willing
> audience?
>
I wouldn't say attention is "produced." It is attracted, though.
Given that there are many semi-independent journalists and camera
crews all seeking attention, to ignore the story of the six year -old
boy carried away in a balloon shaped like a flying saucer would have
been difficult. It had too much intrinsic — or even mythic— appeal.
So did the subsequent issue of whether it was a hoax. So certainly in
this case there was considerable media transparency. ( A copycat any
time soon, would most probably not succeed as well. Originality helps,
even in hoaxes.)
In many another situation, considerable media transparency is also
available. A good enough high school basketball player is going to
draw local attention and then the attention of college coaches, who
would be remiss if they ignore him or her. If college stardom
follows, then professional stardom may as well, and then the star has
considerable leverage in deciding , say what team to play on, how and
wheheter to express political postions, and so on. Enough of a star is
likely to avoid punishment or banishment for what for others would be
considered serious crimes. In other fields too, once sufficient
attention has reached some0ne they have a good chance at independent
stardom, which no capitalist can squelch. However, there may well be
more of a chance element in initial rounds of stardom, and it may be
one has to find some commercial supporter at first.
Overall though , the avenues to obtain stardom independent of being
first accepted or chosen by some business keep increasing. Many an
actor, say, by joining some all volunteer company gets exposure quite
directly. The Internet offers many possible paths to stardom that
don't require passing any sort of test of commercial suitability. But
most who attempt it, out of tens of millions. will not become stars,
clearly since not can get the attention of thousands or more, and, of
course, chance still intervenes in all these cases. So does a suitable
degree of originality, skill at drawing audiences and holding them and
other such matters. There are of course no fail-safe formulae.
Let me add there are many different levels of audience attention one
can achieve, from being the class clown to achieving academic
recognition, to becoming a known byline in journalism, etc. Also,
various sorts of criminal behavior from hoaxes to bank robbery to
serial killing to terrorism can be avenues to getting a good deal of
attention. (Serial killers often get fan mail in abundance, together
with all manner of gifts. More normal stars get much the same of
course. A serial killer in Russia deliberately set out to kill more
than anyone else ever had. )Every Palestinian suicide bomber prepares
a video before blowing up, which later is played on TV. Likewise,
every video made by Osama bin Laden, since 9/11, has gotten a world-
wide airing. (Don't try this at home.)
> 1. Assuming I can't eat attention, does the mechanism whereby
> attention is congealed into a form that can be exchanged and thereby
> transformed into something I can eat (or wear, or drive, or live in,
> etc.) matter for Goldhaber's account? If, indeed, it is the case
> that if I "have enough attention" I can get pretty much anything I
> want -- wouldn't it be worth exploring how this "anything I want is
> obtained"?
The key point to emphasize is that having attention is valuable in and
of itself, and is quite hihgly desired, very often. It is a definite
"upper" to have an audience in the palm of one's hand, to get
applause, etc. Stars of every sort can receive attention is many
forms, such as sexual, or a wide variety of willing services, from
ardent fans. Though of course in an attention economy people still
have other biological needs, say to eat, those with enough attention
need not worry about being wined and dined. The material background
that for instance gets the food to the table (through the intervention
quite possibly of the services of star a chef, etc.) is decidly
secondary or tertiary in this new economy.
Even capitalist economists have long declared that "services" are
now more important than goods production. Services are a quite
heterogenous category, but it is nonetheless the case that many
involve personal attention. Via the Internet there is no limit to how
far back on the chain of "congealing" such services can go. Right now,
much software is produced by fans, say, of Linus Torvalds, At present,
of course, in what I see as a transitional period, it is still true
that converting attention to money is one way to receive the results
of industrial production. However, as productivity keeps increasing,
the fraction of the world's population engaged in routine work such as
manufacturing or agricultural industry keeps declining, even though
more and more is produced. At the same time, factories of various
sorts increasingly come under direct distant control, again, often,
through the Internet. Thus it is certainly possible to envisage all
production turning into services mostly supplied by fans to stars.
Software can operate like machinery, and as the distinction between
hardware and software fades, fans can more and more deliberately
supply all sorts of material items , derived from further and further
back on the supply chain, including directly from the earth, to stars.
Non-stars would (and already do) get some attention through the
various fandoms of which they are part.
Needless, to say, these are only my somewhat educated guesses about a
very complex and uncertain topic. A somewhat different attempt of mine
can be found here:
http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=199
Last questions (from Mark's intro)
> Thanks to Michael for the primer on his version of the attention
> economy -- and a few questions that all stem from wondering
> (alongside Jonathan) why such an economy is necessarily or
> tendentially post-capitalist.
I take this to be a final question, or is it two: Why is the
attention (centered) economy post-capitalist, rather than say pre- or
simultaneous with capitalism? Why should I think it will or very well
might replace or succeed capitalism?
1. As I've already mentioned, industrial capitalism, though it
continues to grow, also continues to outstrip the ability or even
willingness to consume goods. this is why it has become "post-
industrial". But post-industrial is not a description so much as a
lack of one. My argument is that post-industry doesn't proceed equally
in all possible directions. Much as capitalists seek to find ways to
continue to operate in a new environment, they are less and less at
the heart of what affects and motivates ever more people. For instance
those affordances offered by capitalists that allow the seeking or
obtaining of large audiences turn out to be in high demand. Along with
material needs, as I mentioned earlier, everyone starts out in life
with a certain desire for attention. In the heyday of industrial
capitalism this was largely squelched or repressed. But of late it can
less and less be repressed. The existing stars of ubiquitous media all
are role models for attention seeking and getting, followed by an
increasing number of young people in focussing their own lives. The
easier it becomes, at least apparently, to seek attention, the more
people in virtually all societies do seek it. This only heightens the
scarcity of available attention and thus further increases the
competition for it and the focus on it.
2. As capitalism begins to reach the limits to which it can expand, at
which a large number of people (at least in the advanced countries)
cannot easily consume much more than they do or cannot increase their
consumption as fast as productivity can rise, it may reach a natural
limit; at this point something has to give. I argue that something is
a new kind of class system , the one I have described, which has a
different structure and different relations between classes. Further,
the intensifying competition for attention also leaves less attention
to devote to consuming goods or non-attention-related services. this
feedback then increases the likelihood that attention relations will
dominate still further. (Marx assumed that capitalism would be the
last class system, only to be replaced by socialism, but in re-
examining his arguments for that, I simply do not find them very
convincing, again for reasons I will not get into here, but would be
happy to discuss. )
Best,
Michael
On Oct 22, 2009, at 7:32 PM, Mark Andrejevic wrote:
> Thanks to Michael for the primer on his version of the attention
> economy -- and a few questions that all stem from wondering
> (alongside Jonathan) why such an economy is necessarily or
> tendentially post-capitalist.
>
> 1. Assuming I can't eat attention, does the mechanism whereby
> attention is congealed into a form that can be exchanged and thereby
> transformed into something I can eat (or wear, or drive, or live in,
> etc.) matter for Goldhaber's account? If, indeed, it is the case
> that if I "have enough attention" I can get pretty much anything I
> want -- wouldn't it be worth exploring how this "anything I want is
> obtained"?
> 2. I'm not quite sure where the mode whereby attention is produced
> fits into Goldhaber's account. Is the assumption here that the fact
> that everyone pays attention to Balloon Boy can be explained as a
> demand-side phenomenon -- that the mechanism of commercial media
> operates merely as a transparent, neutral, and ultimately dispenable
> mechanism to connect an "attention entrepreneur" with a willing
> audience?
> 3. Does this mean that Balloon Boy (or his dad) really will get his
> own reality TV show?
>
>
>
>
> thanks,
> Mark
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Michael H Goldhaber
> <mgoldh at well.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> It would appear that most of the people on this list who have voiced
> an opinion firmly believe both that capitalism remains essentially
> the only current “mode of production” and that the attention economy
> is, if anything at all, only a not very interesting sub-species of
> the former. This is not how I have understood things for quite a
> few years now. What follows then is a rough and incomplete primer on
> how I see what I shall refer to as “the attention (centered)
> economy,” — a new, post-capitalist class system, differing in its
> essence from capitalism. I have emphasized features that I think
> demonstrate why some views expressed on this list, or in
> correspondence off list with me, are mistaken. The views I
> challenge include the notion that attention flows through the
> Internet chiefly to corporations, that attention only has
> significance if somehow monetized, that it is ultimately capitalists
> who exploit attention, and that money remains far more basic than
> attention. Obviously in such a brief introduction I can hardly hope
> to convince anyone, but I do hope that this will at least open some
> to reconsider the issues more fully. So to begin:
>
> 1. Attention (from other humans) is needed by every human being. In
> fact, no infant can possibly survive without it. Many children, at
> a very young age, clearly evince a desire for as much attention as
> they can get. Whether that desire remains as they grow older is a
> psycho-social issue. But many adults clearly want attention, and
> because of its immaterial nature there is no limit as to how much.
> [I have explored the meaning of attention much more fully here: http://goldhaber.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/Chap_3_3.19.07.pdf
> ]
>
> 2. However each of us has only limited capacity to pay attention.
> Everyone's attention combined is thus also finite. As attention-
> seeking technologies increase, and as social prohibitions against
> seeking an audience weaken by example, the competition for it
> grows. [I have discussed the Internet in this light here: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/519/440
> .]
>
> 3. If you and I were in the same room, having a conversation, and I
> were saying these same words (and you were interested) you would of
> course be paying attention to me. Even if we happened to be sitting
> in Starbuck’s your attention would still go chiefly to me and not to
> Starbuck’s, Inc. In reading this, likewise, you are paying attention
> to me, the writer of it, and very little directly to your computer
> screen, to your computer’s manufacturer, to your Internet Service
> Provider, to the phone or cable company, to thing.net, or even to
> just to the words. (You read Shakespeare, Doris Lessing, or Marx,
> rather than just books they happen to have written. In reading, the
> publisher is of very little importance to you, though the publisher —
> and others in the distribution channel — possibly made a profit when
> you or someone bought the book.) Thus, it is irrelevant that
> attention via the Internet passes through corporate sites or to say,
> articles or blog posts on corporate-owned media. Attention still
> goes primarily to the authors of the individual articles, etc. In
> general, our attention can be thought of as primarily going to other
> humans or, at times, to ourselves.
>
> 4. It is actually quite difficult to pay attention to a corporation
> as such, rather than to, say, a particular spokesperson or at times
> the person who motivates the particular actions of the corporation
> (e.g. Steve Jobs). Even TV fanatics are unlikely to watch just a
> network, as opposed to a specific program with a relatively small
> number of important creators behind it. Likewise, who attends or
> watches a tennis match to see a particular brand of ball, racket or
> tennis clothes?
>
> When a corporation’s executives want to attempt to increase sales
> through getting consumer attention, they normally have to go through
> a complex rigamarole, involving for instance the creative people at
> ad agencies, and much more in the same vein. For instance,
> advertisers try to place commercials as close as possible to
> programs that draw attention; even then, they must also try to have
> the ads themselves be interesting, which often has little to do with
> what is being sold. If the corporation could just get attention on
> its own, why does it not just put its name on the TV screen?
>
> 5. If you have enough attention you can get pretty much whatever you
> want, including but not limited to money, should you want that. An
> anonymous capitalist who loses all her money is out of luck, but a
> star (read: substantial attention getter) if without money, can
> still usually get more attention and through that a very generous
> helping hand from her fans (who are usually net attention payers).
> Stars exist in practically all fields, from entertainment to more
> serious arts to academics to sports to politics to journalism and
> on and on — including even business.
>
> 6. Without getting at least some attention, a person is likely to
> fare very poorly. Even people without jobs or money, on the other
> hand, can still very often get enough attention to be kept alive.
> Thus it is a complete mistake to think of money as more primary than
> attention. The money system and the attention system are different,
> but both rely on what is immaterial to allow material wants to be
> satisfied. (You can’t live by eating gold or dollar bills or credit
> cards, after all.) In fact attention is much more intrinsic to human
> existence than money, and thus, once it is possible to seek it and
> obtain it over wide networks, it can easily come to dominate.
>
> 7. Now we come to the question of classes. For reasons I will not
> address here, I think Marx was right to suggest each class system
> is essentially dyadic, with the two classes of each in clear
> relationship with each other, one being dominant and the other
> dependent. A new class formation generally originates in a situation
> in which an older class dyad dominates. The new classes, partaking
> as they do at first of the old milieu, at first do recognize their
> own distinctness and explain themselves even to themselves
> according to the older formation, though not necessarily in simple
> ways. Thus a member of the nascent star class may see herself more
> as a worker or more as a capitalist (that is assuming she gives any
> thought to such questions) and a fan can also identify either way.
> Further, these identifications are not constant. Whether recognized
> or not, the new class system is in conflict with the old, for it
> relies on building up fundamentally different kinds of relations.
> The combination of different identifications and the underlying
> conflict lead to complex and changing alliances and/or oppositions
> among all the four classes involved.
>
> 8.If valid, of what value is the foregoing analysis, beyond
> intrinsic interest?
>
> A. It facilitates a level of both clarity and nuance in examining
> various key trends and situations that would otherwise be difficult
> or impossible to comprehend.
>
> B. Recognizing the possibility of a post-capitalist class society
> open up thinking that has in some ways been frozen ever since Marx.
>
> C. The existence of the attention (centered) economy changes both
> the concept and the understanding of possibility of a basically
> egalitarian society, of the kind that critics of capitalism are
> presumably after.
>
> D. It is possible that in the very complexity of the underlying
> struggle for dominance between the capitalism and the attention
> (centered) economy there might be room for a new humane socialism
> to emerge. [See also http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/Technosocialism.html
> .].[I have argued here http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=80 that the
> attention economy is in fact increasingly dominant already; the
> argument is necessarily impressionistic, but I think has some
> heuristic value.]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Michael
> -------
> Michael H. Goldhaber
> PH 1-510 339-1192
> FAX 1-510-338-0895
> MOBILE 1-510-610-0629
> michael at goldhaber.org
> alternate e-mail:mgoldh at well.com
> blog and website: http://www.goldhaber.org
> alternate:http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/
> alternate blog: http://mhgoldhaber.blogspot.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> (distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20091027/f09b249b/attachment-0001.htm
More information about the iDC
mailing list