Posted: Feb 3, 2025 / 10:16 AM PST
Up to date: Feb 3, 2025 / 10:16 AM PST
With “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” MSNBC host Chris Hayes isn’t attempting to hitch an already crowded shelf of books warning of the ills of being on-line 24/7. As a substitute he’s exploring how we acquired so far, and the result’s an enchanting historical past of what he calls the eye age.
“Public discourse is now a war of all against all for attention,” Hayes writes.
Given the controversy over the way forward for TikTok and the function Elon Musk and different tech figures are taking part in within the Trump administration, Hayes’ ebook is a well timed information that’s not simply in regards to the consideration trade that social media is consuming.
He additionally explains the impression that the struggle for consideration is having on the shoppers themselves, and the way public discourse has devolved from the hours-long Lincoln-Douglas debates to private assaults on X.
“Sirens” is a singular strategy to a subject that’s on everybody’s minds, however avoids feeling like a retread of already mined materials on the subject.
Most likely the one weak portion is when Hayes explores potential options that felt incomplete like “attentional farmers’ markets” for people who find themselves uninterested in their consideration being handled by corporations like a commodity. These proposals, nonetheless, no less than provide hope that the present consideration economic system isn’t our future.
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