Beyond Focus
Cognitive Exploitation in the Era of The Attention Economy
Giovanni Maria Scala
MA Thesis
University of Amsterdam Media Studies (Research) Department of Media Studies UvA ID: 11795816
Supervisor: Dr. Bernhard Rieder Second Reader: Dr. Thomas Poell 28/06/2019
Index
Index …………..………..………..………..………..………..………2
Abstract…..………..………..………..………..………..………..4
Introduction………..……..……..………..………..………..………5
1. The New World………..……..……..………..………..………..………..8
1.1 Scarce, Measurable and Precarious: Attention as an Economy………..……...…...9
1.2 Consciousness and Attention………..………..……….12
1.2.1 Agency is a Myth………..………..………....……….…...13
1.3 An Economy for itself………..………..………..………..…..….….17
1.4 Reappropriating Attention………..………..………..……...……….19
1.5 Expanding Complexity: The Ecology of Attention………..…………...……...21
1.5.1 Technicity………..………..………..…...….………...…...23
1.6 Extending the Attention Economy………..……….………….……….24
2. An Economy of Absence ....…………..………..………..………….. ..…....……..26
2.1 Aesthetics of Desire………..………..………..………...……..….28
2.2 Ceaseless Simulation………..………..………..………...………….31
2.2.1 Homogenizing Desire………..………..………..…………32
2.3 Shock………..………..………..………..………..………34
2.3.1 The Role of Memory in Shock……… .………..………36
2.4 Endless Reproduction, Ubiquitous Desire…...………..………….…..…...……...38
2.4.1 Dopamine....……...……..……...…..………....……….……….39
2.4.2 Gamifying Addictions………..………..……….43
2.4.3 Microtemporalities ...…………..………..………..45
2.5 Redefining the Attention Economy………..………..……….……...47
2.6 Flâneuring the Attention Economy………..………..……….…...48
2.6.1 Recluse and Cognitive Proletariat…..………..……….………..51
Conclusions…..………..………...…..………..…….………....…..…54
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervisor, Bernhard. His peaceful guidance has been crucial for my intellectual and personal development.
I would also like to thank my second reader, Thomas, who has encouraged me from the start to work on my ideas and to pursue this theoretical path.
Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Félix, my theoretical unconscious, and Federico, my brother.
Abstract
This thesis aims for a redefinition of the attention economy. Such concept has gradually insinuated itself into the vocabulary of different subjects and disciplines, ranging from media studies to economics, from self-help guides to neurosciences. This notion has evolved bringing along deeper problematics, enhancing certain operationalizations which are deeply ideological in nature. A certain analytical alliance between attention and consciousness enhanced to
domesticate cognition and to reduce the whole cognitive apparatus to a series of accountable behaviors. Attention had firstly to be reduced in order to be operationalized and then capitalized on. Furthermore, the attention economy has been soliciting to forget the intrinsically
collectively-shaped meaning of attention: its quantifiable elements have to be considered as exhaustive ingredients of its totality. Biased narratives regarding human agency did not encourage to overcome such human-centered perspectives: an intrinsic adversity to conceive ourselves as organisms within broader cognitive assemblages can be associated with neoliberal narratives of agency. A re-understanding of the mechanisms inherent attention economy frames should appreciate how a flawed relation with the inner is exploited, transformed in value, and thus presence. An aesthetics of desire might enhance an understanding of how a microtemporal formations of desired referents moves such an economy. The attention economy intensifies an anxious relation between the user and the simulative character of certain elements: a
confrontation between subjects and their dividual mnemo-self constitutes the circular movements of these ecosystems. The homogenization of these micro-referents of desire is the ultimate end of these mechanisms. This thesis aims to observe the mechanisms inherent the attention economy which exceed the sphere of attention. Consequently, it suggests a different approach to
understand how the mysterious spheres of human cognition come to be rationalized, datafied, re-elaborated and then transformed into a source at the disposal of capital.
Introduction
In the last few years, mainstream consciousness has been confronted with a new wave of digital concerns. Restless datafication and unrestrained exteriorisation of self suddenly emerged as impellent issues to address. On February 2019 Facebook was confronted by German authorities. Specifically, the Bunderskartellmt contested certain data-gathering practices finalized at building monopolistic types of situation. Gathering certain types of information from users without their explicit consent, capitalizing on market dominance, was deemed an illicit practice. Issues on monopoly emerged, as well as ones on privacy. The response from the heads of Facebook, however, was quite interesting. Through a blogpost (Cunanne), Facebook opposed the opinion of the German Cartel Office, claiming that Facebook’s business has always been about connecting people with the “information” they are interested in. Framing itself as an “attention” business (Busvine), solely focused on guiding the user towards their favourite information, Facebook ingeniously attempted to evade broader issues. Specifically, it attempted to interpret its actions as solely aiming towards attention, as attention could represent an element graspable in its
singularity. But attention cannot be regulated in its uniqueness, without considering a wider process of modulation which involves a heterogeneous array of cognitive capabilities and layers. It cannot be capitalized on without exploiting the individual as a whole. An exploitative
discourse around attention will never be merely about attention. Attention constitutes subjects. Identity itself becomes constituted through attention. Values, rights, laws: they are actualized through attention. The presentness of the moment, the willingness to actively experience it: governing attention always affects other layers of human experience. Attention is not a datum: its properties cannot be studied or exploited by themselves.
Nonetheless, an extensive, partially mysterious, highly-pervasive economy emerges around this concept. The attention economy is one of the most productive and efficient systems of value-production recently built by cognitive capitalism. Nobody, however, seems to really understand what it is about. Social media, platforms and in general new models of online business hide certain ethical concerns behind the curtains of interpretative issues related to this
term. Theoretical criticisms are eventually confronted with empirical operationalizations. The attention economy is a constant fight between theory and practice, complexity and simplification, intentions and behaviors.
This thesis is about the attention economy. It aims for an expanded understanding of what the attention economy is and what it is not. It is therefore oriented towards a wider
conceptualization of this term which contemplates the interdependency of cognition. The analytical association between attention and consciousness often led media scholars and
intellectual in general to attenuate the importance of different cognitive layers in the theoretical analysis of the attention economy. Similarly, such reductionist perspectives reinforced the action of platforms and social media aiming to capitalize on the whole cognitive apparatus. In order to hold new types of businesses accountable for the misuse of personal data, to implement political or social mechanisms aiming to contrast forms of cognitive subjugation, then it is necessary to refine the understanding of the attention economy through a far reaching, deeply critical approach: to understand the attention economy behind attention. That is, the imperceptible behind the discernible.
The first part of this work will converse with some of the current literature and views on the attention economy in order to point out simplifications in the mechanisms underlying these frames. Attention will slowly be developed as a relational concept, prone to ideological
contamination in virtue of its dialectical and contextual nature. Operationalizations of the term in the field of economics demanded subtracted renderings, irreversibly linking the term with
behavioristic approaches to cognition: simplification over complexity, measurable over
unmeasurable. Attention has slowly become undetachable from neoliberal frames of production, irreversibly embedding narratives of agency in the empirical confrontations with the attention economy. The second part will try to unfold the attention economy, to individuate workable operants outside of traditional narratives. It will depart from behaviourist approaches, looking for the objective of an experience which constantly aims to be subjective. A reality which is about desire as much as it is about shock, which hides memory from perception only to resuggest it in different forms; a spectacular, aesthetic, encounter with an individually pre-mediated and simulated outer; a constant exploitation of the individual which is necessarily also abortion of a
potential collective; a particular standpoint on our current relation with media, our co-evolution as cognitive assemblages; a grand narrative on anticipation, governance of time and perception, gamified sociality and socialized virtuality: the attention economy is also a quest for the
1.The New World
Back in 1971 Herbert A. Simon opened up the space for a new understanding of attention. The American Nobel Laureate framed the new information-rich world through quite straightforward connotations: information was indeed a ubiquitous and overloading presence in the modern life of human beings; contrarily, the attention required for this vastness of information to be
productive acquired new value. Attention ceased to be inexhaustible once information stopped being scarce. Within this new environment the rhythms of attention could better stabilized when confronted with a singular stimulus, a small informational activity. However, the quantitative and qualitative intensification of these stimulations inevitably led attention to be molded as something different. Simon opened up to new operationalizations of the term, new ways to disclose properties or features able to produce significance, value, profit. Some decades later, Simon’s suggestion has been actualized both in theory and in practice. “The Attention Economy” has become an influential perspective to describe methods through which attention is exploited in digital economies. New operationalizations of attention within these frames allowed for this term to stick to the reality of the processes of value-production it was operationalized for. Attention became once again operative, but at what cost?
Although Simon’s claim spurred a general acknowledgment regarding such an overload of information and confronted us with a different perception over the monetary value of
attention, it also enhanced a switch of perspective. It declared the malleable character of attention: without a relation, without at least two poles, attention is just an empty container. It might structurally relate to a certain neuronal activity, a directionality of the mind. However, attention is always attention “to” something; it needs to refer to something to acquire value. Simon imbedded this idea within a modern understanding of information: this relation allowed the concept to acquire value, to be operationalized according to certain logics. His was just one of the firsts among many attempts to operationalize attention throughout the following decades - some of which will be discussed in this chapter. One among many approaches aiming to reduce, simplify or emphasize certain aspects over others; attempts to understand the complex relation between user and information while managing, molding, the same association. Simon
admonished intellectuals and businesses: attention is not a datum, it does not aprioristically exist. Attention is a concept, and concepts are always in the process of becoming. Perspectives on the attention economy seem to have modulated the mechanics of exploitation underlying this framework through a unitary referencing to attention. To operationalize attention meant to disclose a whole array of phenomena regulating the interaction between users and different media forms using a common denominator. It allowed, and still does, to process and normalize certain exploitative mechanisms, logics underlying the modulation of subject which far exceed mere attention.
As this chapter will attempt to demonstrate, attention has been used as a deeply ideological concept. Similarly, the attention economy has slowly become an inter-subjective ideological frame. It entered the operative jargon of heterogeneous subjects. The attention economy has been theorized by theorists, operationalized by businesses, experienced by
individuals. A semi-empty container relating to certain observable activities of the human mind, but always prone to subjective determination; a concept fully embedded in neoliberal frames of cognitive governmentality. Ideology fully invests such frameworks whenever they are devoted to encourage conducts by narrating certain imaginary relations to real conditions (Althusser). These real conditions might be regarded - as they are in this thesis - as the exploitative circumstances leading to a creation of value out of individual cognitive subjugation. That is, as it will be observed in the next chapter, a speculative process of value-creation out of psychoneurotic addiction which is fully embedded in behaviouristic narratives (the “imaginary relations”).
1.1 Scarce, measurable, and precarious: attention as an economy
Following Simon, many authors attempted to conceptualize the productive spirit of attention, to articulate this concept as an economic parameter. In this context “economic” is to be understood through both definitions provided by Cambridge Dictionary: “relating to trade, industry and money” and “making a profit, or likely to make a profit”. Aiming for the productive proclivities of attention thus, but still remaining obedient to the structural requirements without which this
productivity could not be substantial. Attention inevitably fell deep into the conceptual sphere of neoliberalism, conceived, in Foucauldian terms, as the expansion of economic thinking towards non-economic situations. Such a standpoint might allow to contextualize the growing necessity for narratives able to explain the continuous appropriation of neuronal activities, the expansion of market logic into the recondite sphere of human consciousness: appropriations of the mind necessarily translating in expropriations of the body.
Different attempts to formulate economic interpretations of attention derived from the efforts of media scholars. Particularly, Tiziana Terranova’s one accurately fits the current discussion. According to the Italian author, attention can indeed be considered as a “measurable economic entity” (Terranova 12), an entity invested with three properties - scarcity, poverty and imitation - which endow this concept of an intrinsic productive element at work in digital
economies. The first property, scarcity, well suits market-oriented environments. The underlying gap between supply and demand of attention opens up profits for managing its distribution through the placement of tailored ads. Such shortage enhances production of value merely by means of allocation. In tailored digital environments, this process consists, for the most part, in the distribution of certain types of processed personal data: the allocation of the user to the user. In other words, what has been referred to as “cognitive capitalism”(Boutang) requires new methods to distribute the abundance of capital. Digital economies have been slowly mutated their understanding of scarcity, dealing with the overabundance of the immaterial through improved allocations of attention and time. Capitalism penetrated cognitive scarcity by improving the mechanisms to measure and distribute it. Afterwards, it built an economy around such scarcity. This idea is completely compatible with the same essence of economics. In the words of Lionel Robbins, “economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”(16). Economics insinuates itself wherever scarcity thrives. It would be meaningful, however, to reflect on the intrinsic significance of this idea. It is undeniable that attention has been introduced to the realm of economics through peculiar measuring-techniques. That is, it has been fragmented into detailed parameters, which were later used to evaluate the productivity of certain behavioral fluxes. Once these movements were adequately accounted for, digital businesses efficiently started to produce value by means
of stimulation. In this sense, the success of these ventures was mainly decided by their ability to observe and regulate datafied behaviors: the triumph of datafication, which is also the success of correlation over causation (Schönberger and Cukier). What has mainly changed is therefore the relation between the economy itself and its referents: the actuality of certain objects which respond to a set of predetermined characteristics which justify and legitimize the presence of an economy around them. What is then the essence of an immaterial economy relating to processes which are not completely identifiable, such as attention? An economy which is not based on actualities, or which misinterprets the nature of these actualities, is not destined to be productive. The attention economy is necessarily also based on structures and objects whose essence is not one of entirely quantifiable entities; it refers to transactions which depend on heterogeneous factors, some of which are not accountable in their totality. One of the main difficulties would be to individuate the interdependence of cognitive layers in the actualization of behaviors identified as attention. While this accountability is still necessary to evaluate the positive value of a
transaction within an economy - the productivity of some kind of exchange - it does not define economy as a system. Furthermore, an economy does not merely relate to productivity, it also refers to circulation itself. We might turn our gaze to the realm of affect theory, where Sarah Ahmed brought to life an “economy of emotions” which is not based on any sort of positive value, but simply involves “relationships of difference and displacement”(120). An economy is an economy because it circulates.
Furthermore, attention as economy is cardinally grounded in a whole system of datafication, entanglement and computer-scale computation. It is necessarily part of that
“unthinkable complexity” William Gibson refers to in his Neuromancer; a continuous sequence of abstractions, a complexity which buries its roots under piles of layers. To be part of an economy, attention necessarily comes to terms with the systemic burdens of circulation in the 21st century. It necessarily has to maintain a constant relation with the origin of its referents, not just as a practical matter, but also as a philosophical necessity. In this “non-relation” Bernard Stiegler discerns the potential for ideology to act. Unlayering attention is necessary to impede a certain kind of abdication induced by a specific relation, or “non-relation”, to critique (Stiegler 18) Philosophy has to maintain a certain critical positioning, or ability to be critical positioned,
towards economies - and that includes the attention economy. Critique transcends behavioristic approaches as well as the efficiency or less of a certain system. Within a datafied system, based on correlation more than causation, exploitation should not be taken for granted. Here resides the necessity to unlayer the attention economy, and the current thesis represents a humble attempt to contribute to this process.
1.2 Consciousness and Attention
A certain critical positioning must be maintained towards the datafied, stratified and complex amount of fluxes and interactions composing the contemporary understanding of an economy. Certain stances, narratives, should animate the search for the comprehension of complexity. The attention economy is one of them: a peculiar way to frame and rethink specific aspects of
unthinkable complexities. While the previous section focused on the intricacies and nuances of the concept of economy, the current one will strictly direct its attention towards the concept of attention. Such concept is used in these perspectives - the attention economies - to account for a certain directionality regulated by users’ cognitive apparatuses; a systematic tendency to exploit the user in the interaction with the media appears through certain narratives which individuate attention as the fulcrum for theoretical investigation and practical accountability.
This interaction is accounted by these frames inasmuch as the concept of attention enhances an analytical understanding of cognition which is detached from transversal reasoning. It determines what Stiegler would conceive as the passage from logos to ratio. In the processes of
grammatization, datafication, proletarization, “the cognitive has been reduced to
calculability”(Stiegler 46). Attention contributes to domesticate cognition inasmuch as it reduces its complexity to a specific array of identifiable behaviours. Cognition efficiently accommodates its mastery if spoiled of pre-reflexivity, as cognitive layers regarding nonconscious perception are not accounted for within processes of datafication and grammatization. As observed before,
accountable and systematic behavior alone might serve as a decisive vector for the movement of an economy.
While attention does not coincide with mainstream conceptualizations of consciousness, the relationship between the two is indisputably a very strong one (Tsuchiya and Koch). As a theoretical and practical concept, attention refers to the whole array of cognitive attributes and characteristics through which the individual is “informed” of a certain informational activity. One of the ways to understand this transfer is through the lenses of selectivity (Pashler 2): attention involves a cognitive effort of some sort, a drive towards an externality. However, this aspect might not be enough to distinguish attention from general formulations of consciousness. Consciousness itself can be considered as selective: “intentional and directive, pointing to a transcendent object other than itself”(Barnes 15). The structural difference between the two concepts might be better formulated through a “negative” understanding of attention. While being often associated with attention, a certain selectivitness does not necessarily relate to aspects of conscious agency and volition. The selectivitness of attention does not imply consciousness inasmuch as it relates to overabundant information constricting attention itself. Contrary to consciousness, attention remains a constraining concept inasmuch as “awareness encompasses only a tiny portion of the stimuli impinging on the sensory system” (Pashler 2). Conceptualizing attention always requires to account for an aesthetic dimension - the relation between an excess and the “sensory system” - altogether with further conscious mechanisms of selectivitness. In order to carry out an aesthetic understanding related to such excess of
information, attention firstly has to be unhinged from a particular narrative: the one of higher consciousness.
1.2.1 Agency is a Myth
Any theoretical understanding of the attention economy should emphasize the role of
consciousness, individuate its exteriorisation as separate from attention itself. Heterogeneous understandings of agency emerge indeed by allocating a certain emphasis on consciousness over
other levels of cognition. The meaning of concepts such as agency, will and volition revolves around their distinct individuation in singular entities or within a distributed assemblage. Their significance evolves and transforms itself accordingly to the material conditions they relate to. And, similarly to attention, they remain deeply ideological inasmuch as their positioning within specific subjects - be it humans or not - enhances different understandings of the interaction between individual and external stimulation. An analytical alliance between attention economy and consciousness becomes dangerous inasmuch as this narrative does not account for the modulation and exploitation of other cognitive layers which impact on consciousness itself. The attention economy, as any narrative, can assist the understanding of reality, and undoubtedly it enhances the production of value through specific understandings and economic
operationalizations of certain behaviors in terms of consciousness. However, it misses to narrate the involvement of other agencies and processes - specifically, how the nonconscious
participates. This narrative is defined by Hayles as “imperialism of higher
consciousness”(Hayles 90) - that is, the illusion that human agency completely stems from consciousness. Such narrative does not merely belong to the attention economy or to other recent forms of cognitive capitalism. It represents, generally, the speculative fulcrum inherent
neoliberal frames of value-production. As Hayles claims drawing from the work of Antonio Damasio, this illusion around consciousness solidifies nothing else than “the individualism inherent in liberal ideology, capitalism, and environmental predation”(Hayles 91). Such narratives can be metaphorically imagined as the “American dream” translated in cognitive terms:the neoliberal subject necessitating a neoliberal subjectivity. But as long as human agency will exceed human consciousness, the neoliberal subject will always be compartmental, and his understanding of own agency always fractional.
This “American cognitive dream” might be rarely perceived by individuals, especially within younger generations, as they are slowly ceasing to perceive an intrinsic meaningfulness related to their agency in different realms, from economics to politics. Mystifying consciousness, deceivingly identifying it with agency, provides individuals with a perpetual anxiety which might benefit neoliberal requirements for action more than individual necessities for meaning. Dealing with agency in the 21st century means to struggle with an understanding of our
processes of conscious decision which exceeds consciousness as such. It requires an understanding of agency which is shared with media, specifically computational ones. Consciousness is already “informed”, and this process regards the individual inasmuch as it regards the whole array of media-forms which store, elaborate and re-present information under forms of stimuli. Agency has to be re-conceptualized, in the words of Katherine Hayles, as a concept which intrinsically implies distribution. Specifically, the individual always act - except for the rare cases of conscious, voluntary, alienation from datafication and technological stimulation - as part of so-called “cognitive assemblages”. These systems:
“address human cognitive capabilities across the full range of precognitive and cognitive timelines: as presuppositions preceding sensation, as stimuli producing sensations and perceptions, as input through somatic markers into the cognitive nonconscious, and as
experiences within the modes of awareness, consciousness, and the unconscious”(Hayles 174)
Consciousness, altogether with other cognitive layers, is informed by these stimuli, which are becoming more and more tailored within the frames of the attention economy. Such awareness obliges both to account for their importance and to suggest new ways to meaningfully act without being overpowered by them. A different understanding of agency becomes then necessary. One which accounts for how conscious perception and conscious decisions can be already pre-informed, modulated, while still allowing to perceive the potential for the individual to act and differ within it. A similar understanding might benefit from the work of Catherine Malabou. Specifically, the French author has constructed a theoretical division between the concepts of plasticity and flexibility. An improved understanding of agency within contemporary conditions might benefit from the former. Flexibility is indeed the aim for neoliberal processes of modulation and subjectivation: peculiarly, in economic terms, flexibility represents a kind of narrative which attempts to de-individualize the singular in order to make it more efficient within a system whose goal is already pre-imposed. Flexibility is, for Malabou, “plasticity minus its genius”(12). This genius consists in the ability to act while formed, to shape while being shaped. Plasticity becomes a way to explore the notion of resistance within contemporary conditions of
cognitive subjugation; a methodological escape from exploitation, a theoretical response to modulation. The notion of cognitive assemblage accurately coincides with such notion as it presents a narrative which does not underwhelm the impact of media stimulation in the definition of our conscious behaviour. Specifically, embracing plasticity means to accept an existential condition. Any frame which aims to account for the allocation of attention towards certain information cannot escape a modern understanding of agency. As attention is allocated, agency informs about the distributed and cognitively-transversal nature of this process. In the
interactions with the mechanisms of the attention economy, agency is neither totally situated in the subject nor outside of him. A certain layer of resistance persists in the process, forging it as a personal, close, experience. The uniqueness of each interaction is not left to chance. Far from it, it is part of intense networks of machine learning models aiming for each interaction to be felt precisely as personal. Nonetheless, the perception of such experiences often refers to the myth of higher consciousness: the user feels completely in control of the experience. Such perception benefits from narratives associating consciousness and agency. That is because the concepts of will and consciousness often present a subtractive nature (Massumi 90). They necessarily reduce the complexity of the phenomena they ought to narrate. They tend to “situate”: allocate certain functions into specific conceptual loci. Our understanding of these concepts hardly benefits from distributed ideas of agency, such as the one of cognitive assemblages. Furthermore, mind is preferred to body when narrating reactions of certain functions associated with volition. But the automatic nature of these reactions suggests an understanding which is distributed, fluid, more than situated. The over excess of information forming such experiences should not be limited to spatially-situated narratives. An improved appreciation of the interactions between individuals and stimuli ought to depend from a more aesthetic dimension - one that involves a sensory experience. This specific understanding of the attention economy will be accounted for in the next chapter.
1.3 An economy for itself
The tale of the attention economy seems to relate to an intrinsic process of reduction,
simplification and narratization. An economy around attention has found its productivity when bounded with a constant emphasis on conscious perception. Along such lines attention can be more easily tracked, its constituents rationalized through graspable understandings of their nature. The attention economy is grounded within a specific, presumed, understanding of attention. The operationalization of certain concepts, specifically when applied to material phenomena, should not be deprecated. However, various conceptualizations of the attention economy - specifically emerging in the fields of economics and businesses - often take for granted this aspect. In these cases, attention has slowly transformed into something different, its conceptualization mutating not merely when operationalized but also when theorized.
Attention has been conceived as the currency of future businesses (Davenport and Voelpel 218). Here, an understanding of the value of attention as intrinsically productive appears. Its aspect suddenly becomes tangible and concrete in economics, as it is already pre-spoiled of some of the attributes observed in the previous paragraphs. What is hidden might be conceived as the “social effectivity” of attention: acknowledging that productivity of attention depends on particular conceptualizations of its attributes which reduce or eliminate aspects which are less rationalizable. Attention is effective in certain fields - in this case economics - because a particular, but not exclusive, conceptualization of its nature becomes socially accepted and then practically operationalized.
Such structure represents a fundamental switch in the history of the attention economy. The more the effectivity of attention depends on a rationalization that is social and contextual in nature, the less a perfect referentialization will be needed. As previously claimed, an economy acquires the status of economy if circulates, as well as producing value. If a specific
conceptualization of the attention economy seems to function, to individuate workable operants, then why change it? If certain datafied flows produce steadily identifiable behaviors, and the operationalization of these behaviors produces allocative value, what is wrong with that?
Furthermore, an economy of attention might not need any other referent than attention at all. As observed by Michael H. Goldhaber in his book “The Attention Economy and The Net”, money
cannot reliably buy attention. When attention is operationalized through monetary translations, a waste of value becomes inevitable. Indeed the intrinsic unreliability of attention clashes with the quantifiable nature of monetary translation (excluding the potentially-volatile character of high inflation). Although artificial intelligence and improved data-analysis mechanisms are
increasingly bridging this gap, the impact of ads on consumption does not perfectly translate in monetary referents. The natural conclusion for Goldhaber is an economy of attention working for itself, as money will eventually lose importance for stockholders. His prediction is that
eventually attention will turn into an economy for itself. Detached from the burdens of monetary translations, the attention economy will finally be complete.
As Goldhaber’s prophecy has to be actualized, the attention economy still requires degrees of monetary translation to be productive. As adduced by Yves Citton, attention “only becomes a currency - which may be exchanged on a market, accumulated as capital and invested according to the logics of finance - thanks to a translation operation which homogenizes and standardizes it so that it can enter into a system of equivalence” (53). The attention economy cannot transcend from reasoning in monetary terms. Nor does it aim to, at least for the present moment. A translation is still required, and its preferred medium is still ads. Advertising is “the primary vehicle for turning attention into money” (Davenport and Beck 127). However, the relation between advertising and attention is a peculiar one. The more advertising individuate specific mechanisms able to seek attention from the user, the more the user tend to escape them. Indeed Davenport and Beck account for the fact that we, as audience, are getting used to
attention-seeking mechanisms. Attention management did not start with social media and
personalized interfaces. It has been constituted through certain mechanisms which are now, both consciously and not, well-known: from “bumping out the volume during commercials” to “sound-bite teasers”(74). The modern user is well aware of these mechanisms. Furthermore, the two authors predict that “people will use attention-protecting devices to ‘tune out’”(208). The half billion downloads for Ad-Block seem to have confirmed their theory. The history of the attention economy will always be detailed by an eternal fight between attention-seeking and attention-protecting mechanisms. However, their analysis of the attention economy still relates to an old understanding of advertising. What if the user cannot tune out so easily? What if tuning
out from the attention economy actually concretizes in tuning out from social connections, job opportunities, romantic encounters? What if the modern users, and their brains as well, cannot get used to the mechanisms of attention seeking as they constantly modify according to the user’s perception of them? The attention economy has hugely evolved in the last two decades. Its aim is way more ubiquitous than it was before, as advertising has become part of the social, personal, life of users. Attention-seeking mechanisms have now shed their skin. Alongside with them, what has changed is the whole way to organize and maintain social connections. The attention economy is more dependent on the personal life of users, their definition as social and individual subject. If willing to avoid the pervasive and ubiquitous presence of the attention economy, the subject-user necessarily has to renounce to certain social and economic
opportunities appropriated by cognitive capitalism. If escape is not allowed, can some form of resistance still manage to exist?
1.4 Re-appropriating Attention
So far, one side of the attention economy has been observed. The attention economy has represented a massive opportunity for businesses, a way to observe and exploit direct
manifestations of cognition through paradigms which are accessible to a variety of ventures. The other side of the equation, however, has been recently undergone many problematizations as well. If many focused on the potential for businesses to exploit certain mechanisms of attention, others had the opportunity to narrate the opposition to the same exploitation, how users can resist and combat the constant draining of their own attention. In the intersection between academic writing and self-help guides, a stream of literature focused on how to resist to the attention economy - not necessarily conceptualized in these terms - is rising. Books such as Getting Things Done (David Allen), Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman), The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg) fertilized the terrain for such a genre to soar. However, among recent literature, Deep Work (2016) by Cal Newport might be regarded as the highest manifestation of a genre which rises from the awareness of the ubiquitous presence of the attention economy and aims to
substantiate this recognition. The possibility to reappropriate our attention sets up what Newport calls “the deep work hypothesis”:
“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their life, will thrive”(11)
This hypothesis can be seen as a revival of Herbert Simon’s claim, a theory which emphasizes the individual, and his potential ability to subvert or himself exploit the massive requirements of the new informational era. Attention can be framed as a resource not only for businesses, but for individuals as well. Different methods to rethink the way we manage our attention and to
repurpose our focus towards better ends underlie these understanding. More than others, one among Newport’s methodological suggestion embodies the essence of his work: to train attention “like a muscle”(60). While it might be conceived as a simple metaphor, its function might be conceptualized in broader terms. Indeed it is through these metaphorical understandings of attention that Newport enhances a practical reduction of the complex array of cognitive mechanisms underlying the concept of attention. The individual can become aware of his exploitation only through narratives which simplify and explain complexity through graspable understandings. Training a muscle is way more comprehensible than training cognition. However, ideology camouflages itself in reduction; it acts in the space that separates an object from how it is narrated (Althusser’s “imaginary relation”). In this sense, these understandings might be questioned inasmuch as they favor a certain proclivity, an inclination towards an external demand. When Davenport and Beck recognized that there is “not enough attention to meet the information demands of business and society” (2), they were achieving a double recognition. They were implying the relational character of attention, the fact that its scarcity is not intrinsic, but it depends on external requirements. Furthermore, they were individuating the other poles, the external requirements, with the key terms of “business” and “society”. It is towards these two poles that self-help guides tend to be operationalized. Their suggestion are always directed towards demands which are not inner as such, but always relational, referring to
the outer. From this perspective, these kind of works become something peculiar, a bridge between the two sides. Here attention is not simply treated as the new currency of business (similarly to how it has been observed in the previous paragraph), neither it relates merely to the individual. These works act as a platform between the two. They consist in a different attempt to quantify and auto-commodify aspects related to user’s cognition. These systems of control (or self-control) stems from the individual awareness of a certain problematic but always relate to external demands, specifically the one of businesses. In virtue of this recognition the individual, willing to escape exploitation, tries to adapt his focus’ paradigms over the demands of work environments and economics in general. While attempting to escape control, the individual falls deeply into it. In order to reach freedom, the individual necessitates an understanding of his own self (comprehensive of agency, attention and cognition in general) which is deeply ideological in nature. Escaping the attention economy risks to be a process flawed with oversimplifications, prone to lead the individual into a circuit of self-signification which primarily relates to neoliberal requirements.
1.5 Expanding complexity: the Ecology of Attention
As far as it will be based on a concept (attention) which is conceptualized in its singularity and considered for its accountable elements, the attention economy will remain ideological. As far as the object of attention economy will remain value itself, the attention economy will have to be based on a reduction of complexity, an imaginary relation which might favor flexibility in virtue of its quest for profit. What has been observed so far is that attention has been reduced,
simplified, in order to fit the attention economy. The quantifiable and profitable preferred to the unquantifiable and unproductive. Scholars are challenged to unfold this relation, to expand what has been reduced. Attention needs to be reinvested with some sense of relationality, losing importance for itself and acquiring meaning for a totality. Different authors have been recently attempted to perform such a role. Among these perspectives, Yves Citton’s “ecosophy” and Taina Bucher’s account of technicity shall be mentioned.
Throughout his recent publication, The Ecology of Attention, Citton tries to account for some of the aspects of attention which are missing in traditional attention economy frames. The French author questions some of the traditional assumptions tending to locate the totality of attention in the individual himself: “before being a matter of individualized choices, attention is first of all structured (and spellbound) by collective enthralments” (31). Citton seems to
recognize what has been so far conceived as the social (and economic) effectivity of attention: its ability to regulate its value depending on contextual conceptualizations of the same. Two
mechanisms of social effectivity seems to shape the reception, meaning and impact of attention in certain contexts. On one side, it is the attention towards an object which inflates the value of the object itself (one of the paradigms of the attention economy). On the other, it is the shared focus over attention which increases the value of attention, both for the collectives which aim to appropriate it (businesses) and for the individual who aims to re-appropriate it (self-help). Citton accounts for a broader, ecological, understanding of attention. An understanding which cannot transcend cultural practices, specifically how attention mediates the transformation of a good in the passage from a material to a cultural status. But also one which resolves the contradictions of social discourses: here Citton refers to the enunciative asymmetry which characterizes dialogue within certain contexts, such as schools, where attention required is unequally distributed among students and professors. Finally, Citton introduced a renewed emphasis on time, and how time becomes a preponderant dimension in order to account for power distributions inherent attention economies. Media are defined as “attention banks”(Citton, 51) : attention can effectively
conserved in digital environments. The analogy with financial institution represents both a way to express the economic conditions within which modern ideas of attention move and a different metaphorical understanding, a simplification which conforms with the ones observed precedently in the chapter. Furthermore, an emphasis on time appears as necessary dimension to understand how attention is preserved. Attention can be conserved within certain objects, processes,
becoming a matter of distributed memory. Preserving attention is necessarily coupled with the mechanisms which favor attention to both persist in time and to be re-called, re-individuated, through certain actions. A retentional economy (Stiegler) necessarily underlies the attention economy. To exteriorise memory means to exteriorise attention inasmuch as the same
mechanisms of attention can be re-activated by a re-individuation of the exteriorised
mnemo-self. Attention banks are therefore also necessarily mnemonic, sub-cognitive banks as long as the re-activations they propose rely on mechanisms transcending conscious perception.
1.5.1 Technicity
Relationality is an intrinsic characteristic of attention, a property to confront and to understand when speculating on the attention economy. Heterogeneous attempts to carry it out include detailed scrutinies into aspects of technicity as such, inquiries over the technical objects which constitute contemporary methods of attention-seeking. A focus on contemporary forms of algorithmic governance is fundamental to grasp a relationality which is sporadically
understandable, constantly in becoming. Exploitation is to be understood also, perhaps primarily, as a cognitive category (Buck-Morss, “Aesthetics” 17) and contemporary understanding of cognition are enhanced by a relational approach which emphasizes cognitive assemblages (Hayles) altogether with traditional understanding of cognition. Accounting for technical aspects of attention-seeking mechanisms enhances new definitions of cognitive exploitation in the era of algorithmic governance. Among these attempts, it might be worth mentioning the one of Taina Bucher. Bucher tries to conceptualize a “technicity of attention”, focusing on the technical elements which compose digital infrastructures. According to the author, attention is not a unidimensional concept, but a “relational force”(4). This specific force emerges from the interactions between human and non-human actors, which co-constitute and influence each other. In these frames attention can be observed as relational and unstable, enriched by a broader understanding of forces and agencies constituting some sorts of cognitive ecologies. Bucher’s analysis, however, focuses on the particular more than the assembled, a sort of microscopic gaze aimed at two Facebook’s algorithms: EdgeRank and Graph Rank. Bucher underscores the fundamental role of algorithms in profiling users and stimulating activity on Facebook, arguing that Graph Rank symbolizes the passage from an “object-oriented attention economy” to a
“trend-centric and anticipatory attention economy”(11). Moreover, EdgeRank “augments, supports, and governs attention by stimulating the cognitive function of attention, as a process of selecting information”(8). Within this frame attention becomes the primary factor to define how attention itself is hunted. In other words, a governance over attention is made dependent on how attention is managed. Such claim is problematic inasmuch as it implicitly denies that attention, besides not being isolable, also depends on other mechanisms within human cognition which are not definable by the conceptual means of attention as such. The anticipatory character of the attention economy already presupposes memory as cause and mnemotechnics as medium for anticipating attention. Memory itself cannot be conceptualized through an absolute focus on awareness or consciousness. A relational approach which aims to be truly relational has to carefully adapt its theoretical scheme to a broader and “interactive” definition of attention. The attention economy seeks for attention, but its action involves cognition on levels of signification which are not conceivable through the mere idea of attention itself.
1.6 Extending the Attention Economy
A preliminary conclusion might be drawn from the disparate theories presented in this chapter: the attention economy is a propitious frame for ideological contamination. It intrinsically reduces more than it expands. It aims at scarcity (Terranova 12) more than abundance, it relies on the myth of the “higher consciousness” (Hayles 90) and on the subtractive mystification of will and volition (Massumi 90). It tends to locate what can produce value and to exclude what trespasses definite boundaries of cognition. Its draining does not go unnoticed. It is experienced in different forms and it suggests practical reappropriations enhanced by metaphorical understandings (Newport). Aiming for a practical economy to be built around itself, attention demands a
commitment: to forget its intrinsic collectively-shaped meaning. To not consider it as a concept, or as a relational-ecological system (Citton) but as an object. To deem its quantifiable referents as exhaustive ingredients of its totality. Along these lines, attention transforms into a currency
(Davenport and Voelpel 218), aiming to transcend monetary mediations (Goldhaber) and to acquire an intrinsic value for itself. Finally, the attention economy can be seen as a structure of anticipation within which what is anticipated is attention itself (Bucher 11).
Nonetheless, many questions remains unanswered. Anticipating attention presupposes integrated processes of modulation which do not solely relate to attention. They orbit the individual as a whole, shaping and shaped by the subject. The subject as a whole comes to be exploited in the attention economy, whereas the perceived directionality of his own focus merely evokes the discernible outcomes of wide-ranging operations. The second part of this thesis will question to what extent the reach of the attention economy can be expanded, whether or not this frame still provides a satisfactory grasp on the magnitude of various practical assemblages which it commonly refers to. It will attempt to confront some of the questions not adequately answered in the various theoretical frames presented in this chapter. Doing so, a re-orientation of the attention economy will be suggested, an all-embracing redefinition which embraces its objects as much as its subjects. What kind of cognitive experience characterizes de facto the mechanisms of anticipation inherent attention economies? Is it possible to improve our understanding regarding the actualities of the attention economy, the symptomatic referents over which its action moves? Are these referents always in becoming and, if this is the case, is it even possible to “tune-out” from the attention economy? Are mechanisms of resistance from these ecologies still
conceivable? If so, how can they be sufficiently accounted for? And finally, is it still possible to consider the attention economy a valuable theoretical tool for a contemporary understanding of cognitive exploitation?
2. An Economy of Absence
Should the attention economy merely be dismantled as a valuable theoretical perspective ? Should the theoretical discourse be more concerned about a comprehensive understanding of cognitive exploitation within which attention only plays a marginal role? Ultimately, the use of this kind of terminology might lead - as observed in the previous chapter - to reduce the space for political accountability of digital businesses operating through behavioristic approaches. In spite of that, the answer to these questions is negative. It would be arduous indeed to deny a certain degree of concreteness surrounding the attention economy. It operates both as a theoretical frame and as an operative concept. Dismantling it would require an act of stubborn intellectual
myopism. As flawed and biased as it may be, the attention economy exists simply because it exists. In other terms, the attention economy is a theoretical approach which co-constitutes itself with its referents. When Herbert Simon reconceptualized attention and information, these concepts were already being heterogeneously managed through certain techniques, such as information retrieval. Similarly, approaches related to the attention economy - ranging between different fields, from economics to media theory - referred to an already actualized reality. Taking inspiration from German media theories, some of the mechanisms underlying the attention economy might be defined as “cultural techniques”. This term aims to emphasize the contingent nature of systems “which are always older than the concepts generated from them” (Macho 179). As a theoretical approach or an operationalized paradigm, the attention economy has formed itself according to an already pre-constituted reality.
However, these perspectives can be critiqued inasmuch as they remain partial, prone to reduction and operationalization. The previous chapter enhanced problematized
conceptualizations of these frames, opening up problems more than pursuing solutions. Many questions were left unanswered, as traditional frames are not accountable or willing to find them. While the main goal of the attention economy is - indeed - to capture attention, it is erroneous to consider attention as the sole target of these ecologies. Its scope is comprehensive of the whole personal sphere as long as the personal will define and direct awareness and attention as such. In order to reach its aim - attention - the attention economy necessarily seeks for something else. A
preliminary question might then be formulated in these terms: how can such “else” be conceptualized in a way that emphasizes aspects which are traditionally not accounted for?
In order to find some answers, the analysis might start from the subject. An approach which stems from our flaws as human beings, feeding itself of the whole pattern of behaviours, thoughts and feelings which makes us feel inconsistent on an individual level and inadequate on a social, economic, political one. Many of these narratives seem to forget that the attention economy is about us, each one of us. Attention has become measurable, quantifiable and commodifiable. As previously observed, it has become possible to buy it, sell it, treat it as a currency or as a resource, as a sign or as a flow. Still, our understanding of attention is daily, constantly, confronted by our subjectivity. A subjective feeling of inconsistency might be affected by - and exteriorised through - an absent relationship to attention. Such “inner” connection is always attached to an “outer”, influenced by external ties affecting the cognitive apparatus. What is experienced as conscious perception always reflects an unstable equilibrium between different forces and stimuli. Even attempts to write, read or think about attention and attention economies are somehow affected by this presence.
Now, try and imagine a business which is based on this feeling. Or better, a systemic inclination which leads the majority of business inclined to gain our attention to exploit this feeling. Imagine that your anxiety, the same anxiety that pushes you to grab your phone while your attention should be dedicated to something else, is exploited. That this exploitation takes place on a timescale so narrow that the perception and understanding of its effects necessitate the joint work of different cognitive levels. Conceived in these terms, the attention economy
suddenly appears as a daily question, a personal matter. As agency becomes multifaceted and shared, as accountability loses its traditional attachments to singularity and intention, the perception of our own subjectivity as end of control and exploitation fades into reassuring narratives. A natural inclination for conventional narrations of agency often impedes to individuate ourselves within broader assemblages. A psychoanalytic perspective appears necessary when approaching attention and attention economies, as these concepts directly confront us, leads to biased and partial understandings and, most importantly, participate in the definition of our own nature. Our attention, in the words of Yves Citton, is not only a filter “for
what I ‘notice’, but also for what I am”(125). Rather than being a datum - aprioristically acting on how subjects direct their attention - subjective identities emerge also as a result of how attention is experienced and manifested. Subjectivity concretely materializes through the selectivitness of focus. However, attention cannot be made relatable to mere subjectivity and subjective identity as such. Its intrinsic relationality - relationality both with the inner and the outer - characterizes its exploitabilitness. Attempts to frame attention as deriving from a singular source - some of them were explored in the first chapter - often adhere to standards of efficiency and simplification.
What does attention mean when the potential immensity of choices does not correspond to freedom? Why are these “ecologies” conceived as attention economies if their focus, most of the time, is distractions? Attention is social, economic, political inasmuch as it implies choice. The attention economy implies the opposite: its value resides indeed in the absence, or
restriction, of willing. A modulation of our own subjectivity then, an exploitation of absence which arises from the traumatic experiences of the individual in the world and feeds itself of the continuation of these traumas, as well as the willingness to depart from them, at least
momentarily.
2.1 Aesthetics of Desire
A far-reaching reconceptualization of the attention economy might then require a focus on loss more than gain, on absence more than presence. Specifically, it would solicit to reveal by what means a flawed relation with the inner comes to be exploited, transformed in value, and thus presence. The movement from deficiency to abundance is the treasured breeze of attention economies. It concretizes in visual suggestions or temporal arrangements, but it already pre-acts on cognitive levels which escape awareness. The attention economy is a constant, ubiquitous presence whose sole aim is to keep moving - as any economy, it can be considered as such only if travelled by its referent. A vast array of ecosystems within which absence, loss and boredom
have to be transformed; they should maintain, in Simondonian terms, the state of virtualities. The user is only marginally exposed to absence, as long as it is required to deny it and to procure shelter otherwhere. This process of creation is nothing else than a continuous
“referentialization”: endless creation of referents for attention, online spaces, virtual simulacra. What is constituted might be conceived as desire as such. A microtemporal, momentary, instrumental desire, but nonetheless one that is fundamental for the attention economy to
progress. Fundamentally, the type of desire described by Jacques Lacan. Referents which attempt to fill an originary loss. Desire, in Lacanian terms, is never completely real or uncontaminated, but always constructed and derivative. The referents of desire do not originally exist then if not in loss, absence. Desire “of” the other - whereas the other does not correspond to any identifiable characteristic of an object or a state of mind - is then always desire for what the other desires. Desire forms itself, for Lacan, through a dialectical relationship between the subject and the surroundings. Similarly to attention, relationality is not a marginal bi-product of its own nature. A dialectic relationship with the outer molds, and re-molds, these referents. The impossibility to trace desire back to a specific potential state - desire is “desire for nothing nameable” (Lacan 223) - translates into continuous redefinitions of the objects of desire. Desire, consequently, is restless.
Such redefinition sets up a modern understanding of the attention economy. One which includes in its analysis both the pervasivity of digital devices and the ubiquity of
attention-seeking mechanisms. An understanding, thus, which accounts for the altered nature of present human cognition, the introduction of the nervous system within the structure of cognitive assemblages (Hayles). The attention economy is based on the intrinsic impossibility for users to process infinite amounts of information, it rises - as noted earlier - from different
conceptualizations regarding the scarce nature of attention. The relevance of kind of cognitive theories such as the one of Hayles is to emphasize that users are already pre-informed:
information “has already been laden with meaning (that is, interpreted in the relevant contexts)” (24) before its encounter with conscious awareness. Information is not associated with meaning merely once it encounters attention. It is always already pre-contextualized. The perception of cognitive assemblages enhances an understanding of pre-contextualization within contemporary
media forms. Information is endowed with meaning by a relationality which is pre-reflexive in nature, but nonetheless fundamental for the referents of desire to be constructed. To a certain extent, absence is already transformed in presence before it confronts conscious perception.
The present time questions to re-define this relationality, to investigate contemporary natures of desire. The Lacanian Che Vuoi ? - the daily confrontation with the expectations of desiring, what the other desires that we desire - still remains, but the source of this question is becoming increasingly virtualized, losing its original attachment to parental figures or even physical embodiments. The slightly inquisitorial tone of certain interactions with media (“What’s on your mind?”) emblematically surfaces the importance of context in shaping loss. Context matters, especially when its ramified aftermaths cannot be consciously observed.
What is then a desirable dimension, perspective, to observe such pre-contextualization, how the attention economy pre-informs the formulation of micro-referents of desire? A
theoretical standpoint apt to observe the contact between information and senses is required, how the body is pre-informed, stimulated, and therefore how it opens up. An aesthetic understanding of desiring, or aesthetics of desire, might be a way for comprehension. Traditional experiencings of desire are veiled within digital environments, and with them the symptomatic manifestations of desiring experienced through the sensory apparatus. Desire might emerge as a dialectical conversation between senses and conscious perception if invested with an understanding of the attention economy which privileges an aesthetic dimension. Because it is through an aesthetic understanding that the “whole corporeal sensorium” gets involved in the dialectics of the attention economy. In the words of Susan Buck-Morss, aesthetics is a type of discourse “over a physical-cognitive apparatus” which come across the outer, and it does that in virtue of its “autonomous” sensors (“Aesthetics” 6). The relative autonomy of these sensors is both due to their material, bodily, forms, and their relative self-determination for consciousness and awareness as such.
Therefore, an aesthetic understanding of desire allows for a momentary departure from perspectives on attention which, as observed in the first chapter, privilege a unitary
dialectical relationship between conscious perception and the senses, a conversation which defines and drives desire.
2.2 Ceaseless Simulation
By all means such understanding of an aesthetic experiencing of desire has to be adapted to the condition of reproducibility and simulation in which the attention economy exists. Far from Walter Benjamin’s focus on aesthetics and sensory alienation based on a direct observation of phenomena of urbanization and fascistization, questions of alienation related to the senses have to refer to these new conditions. The impact of simulacra on the perception of desire, the way in which their “mimetic” capacities impact its same nature, as well as how sensory alienation emerges both as mean and result of this transformation. Benjamin’s understanding of aesthetics related to conditions of ceaseless urbanization accompanied by an intensification of urban
density. Mechanisms of attention were catalyzed by the new conditions, as a more authentic, less unvirtual outer invested the senses. As the object of inquiry becomes a contemporary
understanding of the attention economy, these interactions have to be adapted on the level of simulacra, representations. Or, better, the process of simulation, which on some degree might always had characterized these phenomena, has to be updated to these new conditions. That also requires to consider if the attention economy, in its relation to desire, structurally differs when considering its real-world referents or its virtualized formulations. Are subjects confronted with different kinds of attention economies? Is the relation between the senses and the “real”, physical-embodied attention economy different from the one with its “virtual”, mediated, forms?
The attention economy is necessarily also an aesthetic experience, a continuous encounter with the world - an outer that is already economically, politically and socially shaped before it
becomes actualized. The outer is always pre-mediated, and thus endowed with a character of representation. Jean Baudrillard refers to this pre-mediation through the concept of “simulation”. For the French Postmodernist the whole reality has been replaced by signs, composed by copies of originals which no longer materially exist. From a Lacanian standpoint, simulation thus becomes the totality of lived experience, the real as it can be acknowledged. Simulation metamorphoses into an all-embracing mean to assimilate reality. Furthermore, the image only shows its true appearance if such an act is instrumental to its own purposes. The presentation of something as phantasmagoric, imaginary, relates to the will to explicitly expose its simulated character as mean to pose it in an antithetical relation with the real. Theme-parks such as
Disneyland are, for Baudrillard, “presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation” (171). Baudrillard’s emphasis on the fake
dichotomy between real and simulated resembles a Lacanian understanding of desire as absence. Lacan imagines the “reality” of desire as only formed through a dialectical relationship between inner and outer, which is itself based on an originary loss, and thus the impossibility to clearly discern the referents of desire. Such loss is somehow always dissimulated, concealed. It is within this process that, according to Baudrillard, power reproduces itself: “‘take your desires for reality’ can be understood as the ultimate slogan for power”(177). A necessary question of power, and how power, in the most general sense, acts and reacts in relation to simulacra emerges from Baudrillard’s work. Power shapes desire. Power desires that the other - the
consumer - desires as it is only through this process that mass consumerism becomes a mean for meaning.
2.2.1 Homogenizing desire
The concept of simulation is necessary to conceptualize the realm of the attention economy, how its spirit materializes through a ceaseless reproduction of images and contents. Therefore to
individuate simulacra, referents of desire, continuous drive of the attention economy. Simulation itself might be defined as the process through which simulacra acquire a certain metaphorical significance based on the reality they simulate. However, this reality is not merely represented by simulative processes, it is also enhanced, modified, customized. Simulation becomes an integral part in the process through which the real (of desire) is constituted. What is usually referred to as “reality” - as it is asserted by Slavoj Žižek in his interpretation of Lacan’s paradigm -
“constitutes itself against the background of such a ‘bliss’; i.e., of such an exclusion of such traumatic Real” (“From Virtual” 17). To be constructed is the real of lived experience and not the unachievable Real - solely interpretable through absence - which, in Lacanian
psychoanalysis, is always outside referentialization. Continues Žižek in the Indivisible Remainder:
“What gives rise to anxiety is not the loss of ‘real reality’ but the awareness that (what we experience as) reality always-already was virtual, sustained by a symbolic fiction” (195)
The simulated, constructed, characters of the referents of desire is always present, solely emerging in certain moments through anxiety. Anxiety is fundamentally an intensification of a certain awareness - the one regarding the simulated character of desire. Anxiety relates, similarly to fear, to “that which is approaching rather than already here” (Ahmed, 125). It shares with fear a certain intensity of attachment towards a certain referent. The main difference is that, while the object of fear might show itself, the one of anxieties cannot. While fear might materialize itself through its referents, anxiety structurally relates to absence.
Rather than leading anxiety to its realization, the attention economy constantly abrupts it - it tends to maintain it as virtuality, but as a virtuality which is always present, ready to become. Doing so, the attention economy homogenizes desire. Through this process distraction acquires a similar value of action in a microtemporal formation of desire, suggestions mesh with intuitions. Once a purpose is settled - that is, to maintain anxiety as a virtuality - a way larger amount of referents become suddenly able to realize it. The simulated character of the attention economy is thus meaningful to understand how these ecosystems standardize the “reality” of desire. If
