December 1, 2024
A respected cable news host explains why new technologies make it ever harder to concentrate. The public exchange of ideas, dominated by internet platforms that elevate outrage-inducing content and by smartphones that deliver it to us nonstop, is roiled by a "burbling, insistent ruckus" suggestive of "acute mental illness." So contends the MSNBC prime-time mainstay, a one-time print journalist whose facility for lucid synthesis is put to gratifying use in this smart, constructive book. It's not breaking news that idiocy and sensationalism are rewarded by the commercial imperatives of what Hayes calls "the attention economy," but "even the most panicked critics" underestimate the "scale of transformation," he argues. Seizing small, sequential parcels of our attention for as long as we continue to scroll, social media platforms and extremely popular first-person shooter games operate on an insidious "slot machine model." He carefully charts how the churning monetization of attention has fundamentally changed news, politics, and leisure time, turning our communications landscape into a kind of "failed state" where common-sense norms have been routed by "attentional warlordism." Amid the virtual maelstrom, Hayes wants to help readers reclaim a measure of mental tranquility. Some of his ideas are restrained; others, likely controversial. Small, purposeful acts of resistance--reading print newspapers, forgoing smartphones in favor of old-fashioned "dumb phones"--can impede the tech industry's "endless attention commodification," he writes. He also points readers to grassroots groups fighting the so-called infinite scroll. More boldly, he suggests that governmental oversight of labor issues could serve as a model for "regulation of attention markets," which might include "a mandatory, legislated hard cap on" smartphone screen time and apps. An army of Silicon Valley lobbyists will surely beg to differ. An intelligent, forward-looking analysis of our increasing inability to stay focused.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
December 1, 2024
Readers may remember when the hero of Homer's Odyssey had his crew bind him to the ship's mast and stuff their ears to avoid hearing the deadly song of the Sirens. Likening the mythological hero's struggle to our efforts to stay focused amid information overload, commentator and MSNBC host Hayes (Why We Need the Movies, 2021) turns his attention to, well, attention. Noting that when our attention is concentrated on something, we necessarily withdraw thought from other ideas, Hayes depicts how competition to capture our attention is fierce and encompasses every aspect of our lives, particularly human interaction. Attention has become the most valuable resource in our information age. We crave recognition but settle for its less satisfying substitute: attention. Hayes observes that for the vast majority of our existence, humanity experienced life collectively. Now, our screens render us increasingly isolated. Despite having unfettered access to limitless information, we find ourselves inexplicably bored by excess. Hayes offers a timely discussion of the paradoxes we all encounter in a world clamoring for acknowledgement. Buckle up!
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
November 11, 2024
In this expansive account, MSNBC host Hayes (A Colony in a Nation) argues that attention is the most valuable and exploited resource in the world today. Opening with Homer’s vivid image of Odysseus strapped to his ship’s mast to avoid the sirens’ alluring song, Hayes portrays the modern economy as a battle of wills between individuals’ private psyches and global powers that usurp attention to “command fortunes, win elections, and topple regimes.” Casting a wide net that encompasses philosophers, media theorists, psychologists, and classic literature—from Plato, Kierkegaard, and Marx to David Foster Wallace and Arthur Miller—Hayes unpacks how attention is both a force integral to survival and a resource so sought after that it has become like “gold in a stream, oil in a rock.” Some of the most relatable and amusing anecdotes come from his own life—like his admission that he has devoured “hours of videos of carpet cleaners patiently, thoroughly, lovingly shampooing old dirty rugs.” Hayes’s final thoughts are shrewd if a bit diffuse: he lauds the group chat as “the only truly noncommercial space we have today,” pinpoints Donald Trump and Elon Musk as some of the world’s biggest attention-grabbers, and suggests the (rather unlikely) possibility of “a mandatory, legislated hard cap on” daily screen time. The result is a savvy, if somewhat free-form, meditation on the modern attention economy.