The Assembly Line of Attention

Well, hello there (in my best Obi-Wan Kenobi impersonation). It's been over two years since I last posted anything here, and even then I was not writing very much. That's a long time away from this space; so, why now.

A couple months ago, I picked up Chris Hayes' book "The Siren's Call." It explores attention as a commodity - something we possess, something we spend, and increasingly, something that gets taken from us. As I read it, I found myself thinking between philosophical ideas I've always found compelling and our current digital landscape. After finishing the book, I felt this urge to explore these thoughts somewhere with room to breathe. And so, here I am, back at the keyboard.

Philosophical idea No. 1: When Karl Marx analyzed the industrial revolution, he identified something profound: workers were becoming alienated from their labor. As factories and machines took over, people no longer controlled how or what they produced. Their creative energy - once an extension of themselves - became an external force directed by whoever owned the machines.

Philosophical idea No. 2: Later, William James was developing theories about attention that boiled down to: you are what you pay attention to. "My experience is what I agree to attend to," he wrote. For James, attention wasn't just some mental function but a moral act that shapes who we are and how we experience reality.

I've been thinking that we're experiencing a new kind of alienation now - not from our labor (though that's still happening too), but from our attention itself. Just as industrial capitalism separated workers from what they produced, today's attention economy separates us from authentic ownership of our consciousness.

Our data, preferences, and behavioral patterns that platforms collect while we scroll aren't expressions of our authentic interests - they're commodities owned by tech companies. Instead of focusing on things that align with our values, our attention gets directed by algorithms designed to keep us engaged, not to make our lives better. And just as Marx saw creative work as fundamental to human nature, perhaps sustained, intentional focus is equally essential to being human - yet it's getting harder to maintain.

What makes this especially concerning is that industrial alienation was obvious - you could see the factory, the time clock, the supervisor. But attentional alienation is invisible. The assembly line now runs through our consciousness itself, and we often don't even notice it's there.

Hayes makes a compelling case for understanding attention as an economic resource and draws connections between Marx's analysis of labor commodification and our current predicament. He shows that what's at stake isn't just our productivity or focus but the authentic substance of who we are.

As Hayes writes, "Over time, the commodified logic of the attention market drives the price of this resource down, which is to say it cheapens the very substance of our life."

If James is right that we are what we pay attention to, and our attention is increasingly directed by profit-seeking algorithms rather than our own values, we're facing a profound form of self-alienation - separated not just from what we produce, but from our very experience of being.

Think about how many moments of potential depth or meaning get interrupted by notifications. How often our thoughts get redirected toward content optimized not for our wellbeing but for "maximizing engagement." How many conversations get punctuated by quick checks of phones, each one a small surrender of attentional sovereignty.

These aren't just distractions. They represent a fundamental restructuring of consciousness itself, one that serves capital accumulation rather than human flourishing.

In such an environment, an act of resistance is simply deliberately choosing to focus sustained attention on developing a single line of thought. Maybe reclaiming our attention starts with recognition - understanding attention not just as a cognitive resource but as a core part of our humanity worth protecting. Maybe it continues with creating boundaries and practices that prioritize depth over breadth, intention over reaction.

What would a world look like where our attention was truly our own again? Where the infrastructure of media and technology enhanced rather than exploited our capacity for sustained focus? Where we could once again be full authors of our experience?

I don't have complete answers, but I think these questions are worth our attention - perhaps the most valuable thing we have to give.

Book Thoughts: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Cotton

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

1. Subject/Plot: The story is set in New Zealand centered around a "guerilla gardening group" - the group, calling themselves Birnam Wood, is a collective who seeks to plant and grow food on other's land and public land, usually without permission. Their mission has been muddling along when its founder, Mira Bunting, encounters billionaire Robert Lemoine who makes an offer to fund Birnam Wood. The tension between the group's values and the capitalism of Lemoine, coupled with the questionable legality of their actions (as well as Lemoine's) makes for a compelling story. The story focuses on Bunting, Lemoine, other Birnam Wood members of significance Shelley Noakes and Tony Gallo, and property owners and newly knighted Sir Owen Darvish and his wife Jill.

2. Writing: I read Catton's "The Luminaries" several years ago and really liked it, and her writing her reminds of her writing there. She conveys so much with the characters and their dialogues - it feels both natural and illuminating to understanding the story. These characters, because of how Catton writes, become three-dimensional, and allows the reader to like or dislike them, to feel as you have enough of a relationship with them to render an opinion on their likability. Just really good.

3. Pace: Often a book the delves into a character backgrounds to some extent, let alone 5 or 6 such as this book, makes the book a slower pace to read (which is fine, for what it is). This book manages to do those examinations while maintaining a compulsive readability to its story.

4. Final Thought: I really enjoyed reading this - its the type of book I often describe as being the type that reminds you why you love reading so much. It transported me, I constantly wanted to pick it up and keep on reading. So, so good.

View all my reviews

Change

The promise of tomorrow,

the illustriously sought after change,

creates an ever present, perhaps false hope,

of all, that will be, desired, could be.

That unknown, a story yet unwritten,

a temptation of new beginning,

tis bait and daydream and vacuity

without commitment, action, drive.

What does it take?

To change one's story,

to rewrite one's narrative,

to overcome a hobgoblin of doubt,

to remove the visions from our imagined realities.

The promise of tomorrow,

ever present in today, deceiving motivation

to achieve consideration,

stifling change, nursing imagination.

What I've Been Reading

 I haven't done a "What I've Been Reading" lately post in a good while, so thought, why not?

First book of the year were Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia, a well written, but sometimes loosely connected novel, touching on themes of immigration, belonging, and family separation. Also finished Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury, a meditative book that was a simple read but a welcomed message on the importance of being present. Going into the weekend I hope to finish reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green and Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian.

A few of the other stories/pieces that caught my attention this past week:

1. "Resolutions Are Not the Vibe for 2022" at The Atlantic, appropriate for the new year and influenced my thinking some on my own resolutions for the coming year (post to follow).

2. Another piece at The Atlantic, "How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life." Also read this in light of new year's resolutions, but what I mostly took from the piece is that we too often turn our hobbies - which we initially pick up as a way to reduce stress - into one more thing we need to do, thereby turning it into another cause of stress. That particularly dynamic is something that oft happens to me, so the article was timed well for my reading.

3. A year out from the Insurrection and attack on the U.S. Capitol building, a pair of pieces - one from the New York Times and one from the New Yorker - on the prospect of continuing conflict, even the possibility of a second civil war, and generally on where things are headed. 

4. Finally, another piece from the New Yorker by Cal Newport (who I have frequently read and listened to on podcasts), entitled "It's Time to Embrace Slow Productivity." For Newport, who has written books on engaging in deep work and reducing distractions, this article is very much in line with his prior thinking and writing. For me, a reinforcement of a truth I've learned over the past few years - we only have so much cognitive load, so we can either know more things but understand them less, or know fewer things and understand them more. "Slow Productivity" embraces the importance of the latter and shuns the altar of efficiency (the false god that it is). Good stuff.

Anyway, off to the weekend ... 

The 2021 Year in Reading

I haven't written much this year, but figured doing the annual reading year in review post is a solid reason to come back to the old blog. As I've often said, reading is my most significant leisure time activity, and I continue to enjoy it more than any other leisure pastime. Also, as I am a book nerd, I track my reading, set goals, so summarizing after a year just makes sense.

I wrote last year that my goal was to read 90 books, continue to seek diverse authors, and to reach 30,000 pages. I expressed concern about a high number of books impacting the books I selected (i.e., choosier easier or shorter reads). There was both successes in reaching those goals, and the manifestation of my worries.

I finished the year reading exactly 90 books, but not quite reaching 30,000 pages. The 90 books sets a new yearly record since I left college/law school and started diligently tracking, beating out last year's 88. Interestingly, I actually read about 900 more pages last year than this year, evincing that some of my selections may have been skewed by the high number goal of reading 90 books. Of these 90 books, 69 were fiction and 21 were non-fiction, which represents the lowest number of non-fiction books I've read in 4 years; 37 books were written by men, while 53 were written by women. Several years the books I read were significantly written by male authors; the last two years I have had a better balance, and I have appreciated the additional perspective that balance has given me. Part of tracking has been to not only balance out gender perspectives, but also ethnic and racial perspectives as well. Last year, over 40% of the books I read were by men and women of color; this year, this was over 50%. The interesting thing about this was how much of this did not feel "intentional." Having put in the work a couple years ago to make myself aware of differing authors and where to find book recommendations has resulted in a process where the more diverse representation I sought to make intentional now just happens as part of my process. Its a good lesson that a little bit of intentional effort goes a long way to making something feel natural.

I also try to track genre, though this can be difficult as many books land across different genres. I continued reading and exploring middle-grade fiction, reading 12 books (less than last year's 19). My most read genre was Literary Fiction at 21 books. Other categories/genres of note include Speculative Fiction (12), General Fiction (10), Politics-Society non-fiction reads (6), Historical Fiction (6), and Short Stories (5). I was also notable to me that I only read 3 History non-fiction books (last year I read 11). History has always been a solid non-fiction category to me, and I read the fewest I have in awhile. All in all, I had twelve (12) different genres I read at least 2 books in, which I consider a nice range.

Of the 90 books I read this year, based on Goodreads' rating system, I gave 15 books a 5 star rating, 34 books a 4 star rating, 28 books a 3 star rating, and 13 books a 2 star rating. That's a pretty solid and enjoyable reading year.

As to the best books I've read this year (not necessarily published in 2021), I would say my top 5, in no particular order, are:

• How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
• The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
• What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
• The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis
• A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

As I said at the beginning of this post, I enjoy reflecting on my reading year, and on setting goals for the coming year. I am increasingly hesitant to keep increasing my goals of books read - reading 2 more books but less pages, and only 3 history books, really indicate to me that number I set is having an impact on my selection. However, I continue to feel that setting goals is a reflection of how I want to spend my time, and with ever increasing distractions available from the super computer we carry around in our pockets, I do feel I can read more - both more books and bigger books. With that in mind (and with wanting to finally hit the 30,000 pages mark for a year, I set a goal for 96 books (8 books a month), but with ore focus on pages, I set a goal of 35,000 (approximately 350 pages per book), in the hopes the goal will help me seek out those bigger books more often.

As I said last year, goals are supposed to push us forward; my hope is that this year's reading goals will do that for me.

A Birthday Post

I used to write a birthday reflection post every year on this blog, or at least I thought I did. Looking back on it now, I realize that why I did it quite frequently in my mid to late 20s (when blogging became particularly popular), and just into my 30s. I suppose as one grows older, birthdays become less significant in terms of marking the passage of time (insert joke here). In any event, time has passed and I turn 40 today (over the hill, and what not).

In reviewing some prior reflections, I tended to focus mostly on themes of gratitude and resolutions.  Expressing gratefulness for all that is fortunate in my life while attempting to focus on areas where I seek to improve. Thinking about these themes now, I am very much aware of a tension of sorts with the two. Not a tension in the sense that one is working against the other. But that the two together forces a tension to the rest of life; that the two ideas, both on birthday reflections and in my life in general, have consumed so much mental and emotional energy that not much else has been given space in my mind.

This becomes evident when I sat down and starting reflecting on writing this post. Little else came to mind besides expressing gratitude for all that I have in my life, and thinking once again on resolutions and goals of getting healthier and living better. Obviously, these are valued reflections and worthwhile. But at times, as I think harder and deeper, I begin to question if the proportionality given to these thoughts (or at least openly written about them) is less authentic than I would like, and wander more into some combination of signaling and reminding, both to others but mostly to myself; i.e., even if you don't think/feel this, you know you should.

I believe I devote so much energies to these ideas in response to what I observe to be my natural mental state. There is so much that resides "rent-free" in my head - be it doubt (of all sorts), judgment (mostly of self), frustration, dissatisfaction. I understand, both intellectually and emotionally, that I can't permit these natural thought tendencies/inclinations to dictate my mental well-being. Thus, I focus on gratitude as a reminder not to do down bad rabbit holes; I continually set goals and make resolutions as a way of convincing myself that I am not accepting those natural thoughts - be it my doubt or self-judgment or disappointment.

However, as I have floundered in many ways in working towards goals in the past several months, I wonder at the cumulative impact of not accepting those thoughts. Not in the sense of permitting them control, but that the continued non-acceptance has built a denial of those thoughts, denying them validity, and thus making it impossible to address them. Once unaddressed, they don't disappear, but continue to amass, rent-free, in my head.

This all comes to a point for me this past week leading up to this birthday. I've never had concerns about growing old (I often say and truly mean that growing old is a privilege that many never get). But the birthday does signify the passage of time; and the last year has really brought home the fragility of life. At some point, the purpose of trying to be mindful of gratitude and seeking goals of self-improvement as a way to counteract natural dispositions towards self-doubt and self-judgment only gets you so far. As some point, progress must be made, or else everything is revealed as a weak facade with no foundation.

So, perhaps a less rambling vague and more concise and direct way of summing up where my thoughts are as I turn 40 - while I love and am thankful for my life, I don't always share the same feelings for myself; and I would like to.

Fortunately, I have a pretty good idea what to do - the advantage of all those mental energies discussed above is that I almost always know what must be done. Perhaps in coming weeks I'll share some of those of thoughts. But, for now;  I'm 40, and I suppose its time I start doing what must be done.

"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done." - Bruce Lee

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing." - Walt Disney

Distractions and Missteps

 1. Feels like a winter doldrum continues to set over our house, as the weeks run together and little changes. But I've come back to the recurring thought I shared a few weeks ago about the continued use of social media and, for me in particular, in Twitter. I've written on this matter several times over the past several years in this space, and I'm not sure I have any particularly new insights.

But I will say that the thought that perfectly encapsulates the risk of social media to me is from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" - 

Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker

Over the stained time-ridden faces

Distracted from distraction distraction

Filled with fancies and empty meaning

Tumid apathy with no concentration

Distraction. Empty meaning. No concentration. Certainly social media can be different things to different people, and there may be different values they get out of them. But, as with any medium, the choice to engage can often reveal things about true selves. We see people become more vulgar and meanspirited then they ever would be in person (that is, until, the digital self and real world self merge, with disastrous consequences). For me, it reveals a compulsive behavior to seek more information, more knowledge, more content. In the end, I feel as if I end up knowing more, but understanding less; and that juxtaposition makes me uneasy, uncomfortable, and then susceptible to the same impulses.

I've also written how I think social media (as with everything else) impacts our cognitive load. The concept behind cognitive load is that there is only so much information that can be "stored" in our working memory from day to day, and the more we feel it that capacity with certain information (i.e., tweets and Facebook statutes and YouTube videos), the less we have available for other information.

For me - the distraction and impact on cognitive load - I think has coalesced over the past several weeks to ruin the energy and focus I had on the health front. It required work, mental work, each day for me to stay focused on the health front - to plan out each meal, determine the caloric impact of my food choices, carving out time for walking on the treadmill. When I am like Alice, tumbling down rabbit holes on Twitter, I end up having less mental energy to figure out all the details on my health choices. The last several weeks has been a lesson, for me, in how ignoring the impact of cognitive load, and failing to make choices understanding the impact it will have, have caused me to backtrack on my health goals.

Its disappointing to say the least; but when your a turtle climbing a mountain (the metaphor I choose for framing my weight loss journey), there will be inevitable setbacks when you slide the down the mountain. One is left with either continuing the walk, or succumbing to gravity. The good part of this is that being able to diagnosis what I believe to be the underlying cause gives me the ability to establish structures to avoid those pitfalls; to employ a mindfulness towards my engagement with certain platforms, a mindfulness to help keep focus.

The climb continues.

2. See above for the health front. Hopefully better news to share next week.

3. The reading progress continues for the year. I finished No. 8 - The Deficit Myth and No. 9 - The Topeka School this week. Both were good reads, if a bit challenging at times (in the right ways). I've started Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, which has been an interesting middle grade fiction read thus far. Due to the nature of what has been available from the Library and what holds of mine that have come in are now available, the next couple weeks figure to heavily consist of middle grade fiction reads. As I've said previously, the genre has quickly become one of my favorites due to the diversity of subjects, characters, and stories it tends to share (and they always reaffirm the reading for pure enjoyment aspect).