Do we
have your attention?
New
literacies, digital technologies
and the
education of adolescents
Colin Lankshear and Michele
Knobel
Paper
presented at the State of the Art Conference, University of Georgia,
Athens, Georgia
January 26-27, 2001
To appear as: Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2001). Do we
have your attention? New literacies, digital technologies and the
education of adolescents. In D. Alvermann (Ed.), New Literacies
and Digital Technologies: A Focus on Adolescent Learners. New
York: Peter Lang (forthcoming).
What information consumes is rather obvious. It
consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of
information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate
attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources
that might consume it (Simon 1971: 40-41).
If one is looking for a glimpse of what literacy will
look like in the future, the fighter cockpit is a good place to look
... The most interesting conversation I have had about literacy at
the end of the twentieth century was with a fellow who designed
avionic displays for fighters. He knew all the basic questions and a
good many of the answers (Lanham 1994).
Introduction
This paper is based on the idea that a new kind of
economy-an attention economy-is emerging at present, and that it will
become increasingly dominant in the future (Goldhaber
1997). We will explore this idea in
relation to new literacies and digital technologies from the
standpoint of formal-school-based-learning opportunities available
(or not available) to adolescents being educated in contemporary
classrooms.
After introducing the concept of an attention
economy in some of its main variations, and considering some of its
surrounding theory, we will address three key questions about the
relationship between education and the attention economy.
- What significance do digital technologies have
for paying, attracting, and maintaining attention?
- What significance do new literacies have for
effective participation in an attention economy?
- What do findings from 1 and 2 above imply for
formal education?
Conceptions and theory of an emerging attention
economy
While there is growing agreement that an attention
economy is emerging, among those who employ and support the idea we
nonetheless find significant differences in substance and
perspective. These differences will result in varying implications
for formal education if we decide that education should indeed attend
to the nature and demands of an attention economy. To help clear the
terrain, then, we will describe what seem to us to be three
significantly different 'takes'-albeit with broad 'family
resemblances'-on the concept and theory of an emerging attention
economy. These are associated with work by Michael Goldhaber (1997,
1998a, 1998b), Richard Lanham (1994), the Aspen Institute (Adler
1997), and the NCR Knowledge Lab (MacLeod 2000). We will take these
briefly in turn.
Michael Goldhaber on the 'Attention
Economy'
Goldhaber links the superabundance of information
to the hypothesis of an emerging attention economy. He believes the
fact that information is in over-saturated supply is fatal to the
coherence of the idea of an information economy-since 'economics are
governed by what is scarce' (Goldhaber 1997: n.p.). More fully
stated, economies are based on 'what is both most desirable and
ultimately most scarce' (Goldhaber
1998b: n.p.). Yet, if people in
postindustrial societies will increasingly live their lives in the
spaces of the Internet, these lives will fall more and more under
economic laws organic to this new space. Goldhaber (1997,
1998a) argues that the basis of the coming new economy will be
attention and not information.
Attention, unlike information, is inherently
scarce. This, says Goldhaber (1998b: n.p.), is because 'each of us
has only so much of it to give, and [attention] can only come from
us-not machines, computers or anywhere else'. But like information,
attention moves through the Net. Goldhaber identifies cyberspace as
the being where the attention economy will come into its own.
The idea of an attention economy is premised on
the fact that the human capacity to produce material things outstrips
the net capacity to consume the things that are produced-such are the
irrational contingencies of distribution. In this context, 'material
needs at the level of creature comfort are fairly well satisfied for
those in a position to demand them' (Goldhaber 1997: n.p.)-the great
minority, it should be noted, of living human beings. Nonetheless,
for this powerful minority, the need for attention becomes
increasingly important, and increasingly the focus of their
productive activity.
Goldhaber (1998a) argues that when our material
desires are more or less satisfied, such that we do not feel
pressures of scarcity (such as being afraid of hunger or lack of
shelter), we are driven increasingly by 'desires of a less strictly
material kind'. Several such desires, he believes, converge toward a
desire for attention. These include, for example, a desire for
meaning in our lives-which is no longer a 'luxury' once material
needs are assured. Goldhaber links the search for meaning to gaining
attention. 'Why are we here, and how do we know that we are somehow
worthwhile? If a person feels utterly ignored by those around her,
she is unlikely to feel that her life has much meaning to them. Since
all meaning is ultimately conferred by society, one must have the
attention of others if there is to be any chance that one's life is
meaningful' (ibid.: n.p.).
Hence, in the attention economy:
The energies set free by the successes
of … the money-industrial economy go more and more in the direction
of obtaining attention. And that leads to growing competition for
what is increasingly scarce, which is of course attention. It sets up
an unending scramble, a scramble that also increases the demands on
each of us to pay what scarce attention we can (Goldhaber 1997:
n.p.).
Goldhaber makes six points of particular relevance
to our concerns here.
First, in economically advanced societies young
people during recent decades have spent a huge proportion of their
waking hours within two key contexts: either in school, or engrossed
in media-especially television and audio-recordings. The experiences
of these contexts involve paying great amounts of attention and,
moreover, focusing attention on 'a relative few' (Goldhaber 1998a):
TV personalities, stars in different fields (music, sport, films,
etc.) whom we attend to via television or audio media or contemporary
multimedia, teachers, selected members of our peer group, etc.
Goldhaber notes that
everyone who is seen on television
models one common role, as do all teachers in schools, and that role
is to be the object of a good deal of attention. Thus, without
planning or intention, there has been a kind of cultural revolution,
telling us that getting attention is a fine thing. And for many of
us, having the attention of others turns out to feel very good,
something we often want more of (ibid.).
Second, Goldhaber envisages two 'classes' within
the attention economy. These are 'Stars', who have large amounts of
attention paid to them, and 'Fans', who pay their attention to the
stars. Because paying attention requires effort, fans supply most of
the effort in the attention economy. Unlike most workers in the
industrial economy who had/have only one boss, fans will typically
devote their attention-paying effort to multiple stars. While stars
are the great winners in the attention economy, the losers are not
necessarily the fans-who may receive sufficient 'illusory attention'
to meet their attention needs. The losers, says Goldhaber, are those
who don't get any attention, who are simply ignored. This entails
having 'less of a clear identity and place in the community' (ibid.).
The extreme case Goldhaber gives is a homeless person who dies in the
street but is ignored for days-as happened in LA not so long ago.
'Losers' may be people who do not stand out sufficiently to attract
attention, or individuals who do not effectively reward attention
paid to them, or else individuals who repel others by demanding too
much attention (1998a).
Third, being able to participate in the attention
economy involves knowing how to pay and receive attention. A
distinction between real attention and illusory attention is involved
here. This is because in order to get attention one has to pay
attention. Goldhaber (1997) argues that in a full-fledged attention
economy the goal is simply to get enough attention or to get as much
as possible. Clearly, accumulating more than one's 'share' of
attention involves receiving more than one puts out. On the other
hand, if one is to get attention one has to pay attention. The
conundrum so far as the attention rich are concerned is resolved by
the distinction between real and illusory attention. Stars and
performers pay 'illusory attention' to fans and audiences. They
create the illusion that they are paying attention to each fan, to
each member of their audience. Attention involves an exchange. People
will withhold attention if they have no interest in the exchange.
When readers lose interest in a chapter they put the book down. To
maintain interest they have to believe that the author is attending
to them and their needs or desires. Creating illusory attention may
be done by 'pretending to flatter' the audience, 'creating questions
in their minds which you then "obligingly" answer,' claiming you will
'help them with some real problem they have', making eye contact,
gesturing, etc. (ibid.). Methods of creating illusions of attention
may lose worth (effect) if they become too common or too well
recognized.
Fourth, the emerging attention economy is creating
large markets for attention technologies-technologies that allow us
to get attention, or that make it possible for us to go after it. The
Internet is a classic example (see below). But old technologies like
theatre stages are also important. The recent invention of digitized
wearable display jackets (Kahney 2000) is a new trend in generating
attention (see below also). This may involve gaining attention
directly, for example, by advertising oneself. It may, however,
involve a form of 'three-way attention transaction' (Goldhaber
1998a). This is where one has attention passed to one by somebody
else-as when advertisers use stars to pass attention to clients and
their products, or show hosts pass attention to guests (but in turn
also receive attention from fans of the hosts who watch the shows).
Hence, someone wearing a display jacket may screen clips of a popular
star or even a favourite game show.
Fifth, the attention economy necessarily entails a
new kind of privacy from the familiar kind of having private space
away from the public gaze. Those who would accumulate attention have
to be 'out there.' Attention wealth accrues from expressing oneself
fully, living one's life 'as openly as possible', and expressing
oneself 'as publicly as possible as early as possible'-e g., putting
drafts on the web, rather than keeping them under wraps until
publication (Goldhaber 1998b: 8th principle). The quest for privacy
under these conditions becomes one of avoiding being constrained by
'would-be attention payers' as well as/in tandem with avoiding having
to pay them too much attention (Goldhaber 1998a). Whereas the old
privacy was about not being seen, the new privacy will be about 'not
[having] to look at or see anyone else' (ibid.).
Finally, gaining attention is indexical to
originality. It is difficult, says Goldhaber, to get new attention
'by repeating exactly what you or someone else has done before.'
Consequently, the attention economy is based on 'endless originality,
or at least attempts at originality' (Goldhaber 1997: n.p.).
Attention is a function of 'everything that makes you distinctly you
and not somebody else' (Goldhaber 1998b: 9th principle).
Richard Lanham on the attention
economy
In 'The Economics of Attention' (1994), Lanham's
focus is on the changing world of the library and, especially, on the
changing role of librarians in the age of digitized information and
communications technologies. According to Lanham, in order to address
questions like: 'how are libraries and librarians to negotiate the
changing terrain of information?'; 'what kind of changes are
involved?'; and 'where should one look for clues to handling the
changes?'; it is important to understand the new economy of
attention.
Lanham shares some common bases with Goldhaber. He
begins by observing that we currently seem to be moving from 'the
goods economy' to 'the information economy' (Lanham 1994: page?).
Within the so-called information economy, however, information is not
a scarce resource. On the contrary, 'we are drowning in it' (ibid.).
At least, to put it more accurately, we are drowning in a particular
order or kind of information-information as raw data,
Lanham argues that we use different terms for
information depending on how much attention-'the action that turns
raw data into something humans can use'-has been given to it (ibid.).
No attention gives you 'raw data'. Some attention
gives you 'massaged data'. Lots of attention gives you 'useful
information'. Maximal attention gives you 'wisdom'. And so on
(ibid.).
For simplicity's sake Lanham reduces these types
of information to Data, Information, and Wisdom, and claims that of
these wisdom and information are in shortest supply. In the face of
the volumes of Data coming at us 'we do not have time [and] do not
know how to construct the human-attention structures that would make
data useful to us both for ... private life and public life, domestic
economy and political economy' (ibid.; cf., Gilster 1997 ). The
scarce resource in the information economy, according to Lanham, is
attention.
Like Goldhaber, Lanham identifies the key resource
of the new economy as non-material (or what he calls 'immaterial').
But when the most precious resource is non-material, 'the economic
doctrines, social structures, and political systems that evolved in a
world devoted to the service of matter become rapidly ill-suited to
cope with the new situation' (Wriston 1997, cited ibid.). In a manner
very similar to Goldhaber, among growing numbers of others (e.g.,
John Perry Barlow, in Tunbridge 1995), Lanham insists that we cannot
continue to apply concepts, laws, practices and the like that were
developed to deal with the economic world of goods to the emerging
economic world of information. Entertaining and exploring the notion
of an emerging economy of attention looks like a step in the right
direction.
From these similar starting points, however,
Lanham's thought/theory develops in a different direction from
Goldhaber's. Rather than focusing on how to gain and maintain
attention, Lanham is concerned with how to facilitate or enable
attention to data by developing new human attention structures for
attending to the flood of information-as-data we face constantly. He
notes that banks have been early starters here, out of necessity,
since the banks' traditional role of safeguarding clients' money and
lending it out has largely been taken over by other institutions. 'To
survive, banks are now creating from the digital stuff of
instantaneous global data new attention structures for savers and
borrowers, new investment instruments [which banks call]
"securitization" ' (ibid.). These provide people with new frames for
attending to the financial part of their world.
Lanham elucidates the concept of human-attention
structures by reference to examples from contemporary conceptual art
and pop art. In an environmental art exhibit which involved erecting
many large umbrellas in two very different kinds of location-a rainy
valley in Japan and a desert mountain pass in southern California-the
artist, Christo, created 'temporary attention structures to make us
pause and ponder how we engage in large-scale collective human
effort' (ibid.). The 'product' was attention structures rather than
objects. 'The center of the project ... became the contrast in how
each culture went about its work, both social and geographic'
(ibid.).
Some decades earlier Roy Lichtenstein had taken
popular attention structures like the comic strip as his subject
matter. Andy Warhol, as much as conceptual artists in the mould of
Christo, Rauschenberg, and Robert Irwin, along with today's leaders
in the aesthetics of digital expression, recognized that organizing
human attention was 'the fundamental locus of art, not making
physical objects' (ibid.). Lanham notes that many of Warhol's best
remembered observations indicate how far the Pop Art explosion
comprised an 'Arts of Attention Management': c.f., 'we weren't just
at the exhibit, we were the art incarnate and the sixties were really
about people, not about what they did,' and 'Fashion wasn't what you
wore somewhere anymore, it was the whole reason for going' (Warhol,
cited ibid.).
Within the information economy the scarce
commodity is 'how human attention sorts out an overpowering flow of
information' (ibid.). Examples from the worlds of conceptual and pop
art reveal the macroeconomics of attention. From the perspective of
the microeconomics of attention, Lanham asks how the overload of
information carried by 'the rich signal' which is the heart of the
digital revolution can be managed. This signal can be manifested as
alphabetic text, as image and as sound, and 'creates its own internal
economy of attention.' Lanham illustrates this with his example of
fighter-jet cockpit displays, where digital data arrives at quantum
rates in alphabetical and numerical information, in iconic displays,
and as audio signals. A design was needed to mix all this
data-information into 'a single functioning information structure'
that, as in the rest of contemporary life, allows our minds to make
sense of data coming at us 'thick and fast' (c.f., ibid.). This is a
technical instance of the larger questions of how to develop
structures-frames and organizers-that facilitate paying attention to
data so that we can turn it into something useful, and who will
develop these structures? To the extent that the world of information
at large is becoming like the fighter cockpit displays as it falls
increasingly under the logic of digital expression, the key questions
for literacy and the answers to those questions will increasingly
concern how to develop attention structures and to organize and
manage information.
As a new dominant metaphor for thinking about our
world, as matter and energy were previously, the model of information
directs us to attend to what lies behind or beneath 'stuff'-the world
of objects-and to see 'hidden forces and forms ... which those
objects allegorize' (ibid.). Similarly, a theory of communication
based on stuff presupposes a model of simple exchange whereby a
package of thought and feeling is transferred from one body and place
to another or others. The same communication model, says Lanham,
employs a 'Clarity-Brevity-Sincerity' style of prose and expression
(ibid.).
Lanham argues that this model no longer applies.
In terms of style and expression the transaction within an attention
economy is no longer 'simply the rational market ... beloved by the
economists of stuff'. Rather, people bring with them to the free
market of ideas 'a complex calculus of pleasure' and 'make all kinds
of purchases' in the attention economy. Lanham suggests that our
efforts to learn and understand how to handle the new conditions of
'seeing' and thinking about the world, and of style and expression-in
short, how to develop appropriate attention structures-may be
usefully informed by earlier and long-standing arts and habits. These
include the Western tradition of rhetoric and the medieval
allegorical habit of life and thought that saw 'the immanence of God
as informing all things' (ibid.).
In spatial terms, the information model is
revolutionizing practices of literacy and thinking, which Lanham
illustrates by reference to the library. No longer can librarians see
their role as one of 'facilitating thinking done elsewhere,' as was
the case in the age of lending out books: a matter of 'maintaining
the signifiers, and leaving the decryption of the signifieds to the
readers' (Atkinson, cited ibid.). Instead, in the world of
superabundant information, thinking involves generating attention
structures and libraries and librarians are in the middle of this-as
schools and teachers and academics should be (although Lanham holds
out little short term hope for universities and does not mention
schools).
The point, finally, is that gateways will need to
be developed to facilitate attention to information, to turn it into
something useful for users and to enable users to use it usefully in
terms of their wants and goals. Lanham believes, however, that this
involves much more than the current development of intelligent
software agents like search engines, specialized bots, the practice
of 'data mining', and the like. Rather, he says, there is a frame
issue involved. Building attention structures is more than a software
or 'technical' issue alone. It calls for an architecture that
incorporates frames, and for a 'new kind of human architect' who will
mediate the economics of attention. This will be far from a technical
task and will comprise the highest order and most powerful, sought
after and rewarded literacy.
Advertising and the Attention
Economy: The Aspen Institute and National Cash Registers' Knowledge
Lab
Not surprisingly, the notion of an economics of
attention, and the theme of how to gain attention as an increasingly
scarce resource in proportion to the sources competing for it, have
entered advertising discourse during recent years. Advertising is a
domain of human practice with a strong stake in the economics of
attention: the 'first challenge for every advertiser is to capture
and hold the attention of the intended audience' (Adler 1997: 5).
Indeed, advertisers have to create attention to products in which the
targets of advertising typically have no inherent interest. Despite
the massive and increasing amount of time citizens in countries like
the US spend using or consuming media of one kind or
another-projected to reach 60.5% of the waking hours of the average
US person in 2000-advertising faces ever-increasing competition for
attention. More is involved in this competition than the success of
advertisers and products alone. The very fortunes of the media used
for advertising-from TV (whether public broadcast or cable) to the
WWW, via newspapers, magazines and radio-fluctuate with and depend
upon levels and constancy of advertising revenue.
In 1996 the Aspen
Institute hosted a seminar to assess the
current state of and prospect for the field of advertising and to
identify perspectives on how individuals choose to allocate their
attention. The seminar made particular reference to the context of
emerging new media, notably the Internet and WWW, which have the
potential to challenge established media as advertising channels. As
Internet use has continued to grow rapidly in recent years, the Net
has been transformed 'from a non-profit medium for academic and
personal communication into a dynamic commercial medium' in which
most major corporations and many small companies have established an
online presence (ibid: 20). Although Internet advertising accounts
for only a tiny proportion of total current advertising expenditure,
it is growing rapidly and a hot search has been mounted by marketers
and advertisers to create ever new and more effective means for
gaining attention.
The Internet, however, presents advertisers with
differences in both degree and kind from other media. The Web, for
example, produces a massive 'fragmentation of channels' (ibid: 21).
As the original situation of a very small core of television networks
became dozens and then literally 'hundreds of different cable-and
satellite-delivered channels,' advertisers had to switch from
broadcast to narrowcast strategies. With the advent of the Net,
however, 'there are now potentially millions of channels available,
with the conceivable end point being a separate, customized channel
for each individual' (ibid: 21-22). The growth of new interactive
media creates the possibility for one-to-one marketing. This involves
a strategy which focuses less on building advertising market share
than on 'investigating a company's best customers and building a
one-to-one relationship with them' in order to get more purchasing or
consuming per customer by 'treating them as individuals … [to] build
loyalty' (ibid: 24).
This is a context where there is much to play for
and where old kinds of intermediaries and partnerships change and new
ones are invented. For example, given that distribution expenses may
account for 50-80% of the end cost of consumer products, if producers
can bypass conventional marketing and distribution intermediaries and
sell direct to the consumer via the Internet has potentially huge
advantages for the latter in terms of cost and ease. At the same
time, however, Internet users have greater potential than users of
other media to actively control the information they receive. In Net
advertising, the relative balance of power shifts from producers to
consumers of advertising, since on the WWW customers do not face the
choice of sitting through intrusive ads (ibid: 37). The logic that
has to operate in Net advertising is less one of how media users can
opt out of advertisements to one of how advertisers can get users to
opt in to marketing information.
This has seen the emergence of new kinds of
intermediaries, like search engines, bots, the active creation of
interest-based online communities with potential for commercial
exploitation, collaborative filtering technology for sharing views
and interests online, and so on. For example, marketers quickly saw
and acted on the potential of creating and exploiting online
communities concerned with specific topics that would attract key
groups or niches of customers. Once these audiences are created and
identified, marketers can interact with them to 'sell and support
products, provide customer service [and] conduct continuous market
research' (ibid: 25). Ingenious devices and processes-as well as some
utterly gross forms-have been developed to capture audience attention
on the Internet. Gross forms include email 'spam' and 'push'
strategies, as well as successive generations of eye-catching
'gizmos' (javascript animation, flashing words, etc.). Subtler means
include companies hiring marketers to create 'ad bots' that inhabit
chat rooms and similar spaces on the Net. These respond to trigger
words and can engage potential customers in private conversation that
has commercial relevance (ibid.).
High profile research work, backed by serious
budgets, aimed at developing approaches to advertising grounded in
the economics of attention are under way. Perhaps the current leader
in the field is the NCR Knowledge
Lab. The Lab's work in this area begins
from the idea that consumers are saturated with potential information
sources for practically any requirement and simply cannot use all the
available options without eating heavily into time. For producers and
vendors operating in the emerging Network Economy, this creates the
challenge of how to get the attention of those consumers they want to
attract and/or keep, and how to make their product or brand stand out
amid increasing competition for customer attention. According to the
Knowledge Lab, as the Network Economy continues to grow, attention
will become increasingly scarce. As a consequence,
[f]irms will have think of themselves
as operating both in an Attention Market as well as their core
market.
Attention will be hard to earn, but if it is
viewed as a reciprocal flow, firms can use information about
consumers and customers to stand out in a sea of content to increase
profitability: pay attention to them and they pay attention to you.
Relationships are likely to encompass attention transactions. As
customers realize the value of their attention and their information
needed to get it, we show that they may require payment of some kind
for both.
The Knowledge Lab is looking into how we can
quantify, measure and track flows of attention in the Network Economy
(<http://www.knowledgelab.ncr.com>).
To this end the Knowledge Lab has established
Consumer Research as one of its five research foci. The program
comprises research into a tracery of intersecting themes. These
include (among others) the nature and role of online branding, the
use of interfaces for interactions and relationships with customers,
the adoption and diffusion of new technology, online communities and
relationships, 'connecting with kids' and 'cashless kids,' together
with research on the attention economy.
The Lab has also developed and trademarked the
concept of 'Relationship Technologies' and settled on a view of
attention as 'engagement with information.' The key to successful
business in the future, says the Lab, will be the capacity to
generate and maintain personal attention to new and existing
customers. Advertising can create opportunities to gain attention,
but it cannot actually secure, let alone maintain and build ongoing
attention (MacLeod 2000). Early work by Lab researchers suggests the
importance of using personal information to gain initial attention,
and 'harnessing [this] attention' to create successful 'real
relationships' with customers (ibid: 3) with the assistance of
'relationship technologies.' Successful relationships of all kinds
'contain the elements of attraction, communication, "being there" for
the other party, and understanding.' The Lab's idea is that in
business as well as in other areas of life, relationship technologies
will serve to 'enable, support and enhance these key elements of real
relationships' (ibid.).
This will be achieved through attention
transactions in which information flows back and forward between
content providers (the business or commercial interest) and content
users (potential and actual customers). Since attention is
'engagement with information', both-way information flows grounded in
reciprocal interest are, in effect, attention transactions that
create and sustain relationships (ibid: 7). The Lab puts its faith in
the capacity of paying attention to gain and maintain attention. Its
early research documents various mechanisms used to try and elicit
customer attention (such as paying people to view content, providing
free computers which come with content, offering free email via
portals which bombard users with advertising and other commercial
information, and so on). Without dismissing these outright, the Lab
stresses the importance of attention transactions based on personal
information. This requires customers to appreciate the advantages
that can come from providing personal information that permits
companies to pay personal attention to them in the course of creating
and developing successful relationships (ibid.). Reciprocally, it
presupposes that companies will use this information fruitfully.
'Acquiring personal information about a potential customer is useful
only insofar as it can be translated into more personal attention'
(ibid.: 19).
Rory MacLeod (ibid: 19-20) identifies several key
strategic implications for businesses operating in the Network
Economy. These include:
- participation in the Network Economy
presupposes participating in the Attention Market, since to
develop relationships with customers it is necessary first to have
their attention.
- to gain the attention of network users
companies must transform initial contacts (e.g., as obtained by
advertising) into an attention transaction from which to develop
relationships.
- at the beginning of a relationship it may be
necessary to purchase information, and some consumers may be able
to ask more for it than others. Hence, companies must be prepared
to negotiate.
- consumer information costs should be seen as
investments that have value to be unlocked rather than as costs to
be avoided.
- the 'epitome of an attention-based
relationship is to move from mass customisation to engaging
customers in the design of products for themselves.'
- as pressure increases on people's time,
companies best able to provide 'intelligent agents or
intermediaries' will get 'first call on [a] consumer's
attention.'
- companies will have to identify technologies
best suited to capture consumers' attention, 'and "own" the newly
emerging personal access points.'
Overlaps and differences: multifaceted
attention
While there is much more to be said than is
possible here, there seems to be significant overlap as well as
significant differences among these positions. In terms of
differences, the three perspectives pursue attention on behalf of
quite different purposes and beneficiaries.
Goldhaber's account focuses on individuals
pursuing attention for their own purposes in terms of finding meaning
for their lives under 'post materialist' conditions. Lanham addresses
the pursuit of attention structures that will enable other people to
use information effectively in relation to what they are interested
in. The work of the Aspen Institute and the NCR Knowledge Lab seeks
in different ways to help companies mobilize attention in the
interests of selling consumer items to customers who believe their
purposes are served by purchasing them.
The main point of overlap seems to be the creation
of effective attention structures, even though Lanham is the only one
of the three to identify this construct explicitly. Managing
attention is clearly where the action is for each perspective. The
point of advertisers, producers, and vendors entering relationships
with consumers and obtaining information on them directly or via
research is to be able better to mobilize and organize their
attention to what is available commercially as goods and services.
Goldhaber's reference to the pursuit of endless originality seems
also, albeit tacitly, to entail a search for frames that will draw or
focus the attention of potential fans on would be stars.
Digital technologies and the economics of
attention
Goldhaber (1997) highlights the distinctive
significance of new information and communications
technologies-especially, but by no means solely, the WWW. He sees the
capacity to send out multimedia or virtual reality signals via the
Web as a particularly effective and efficient means for attracting
attention and paying illusory attention.
Say you are primarily a writer of mere words,
i.e., text; still, on the Web you [are] able to supplement your
writings with you picture, with video images, with recordings of your
voice, with interviews or pieces of autobiography. The advantages of
doing that is that by offering potential readers a more vivid and
rounded sense of who you are, you can both increase their sense of
who it is who is offering them illusory attention, and have them have
a clearer and more definite feeling than otherwise of what it is like
to pay attention to you, rather than to some other writer of similar
sounding words. Both these effects can help you hold their attention
better (ibid.: n.p.).
In this way the Web is an ideal means for
'transmitting and circulating attention' and is getting better for
this all the time: a precondition, says Goldhaber, for a full-fledged
attention economy to emerge. He contrasts the circumstances of Plato
with those of any number of people today. Over the past two
millennia, says Goldhaber, millions of people have read and studied
(paid attention to) Plato. But apart from 'contributing to his
"immortality," the vast majority of that attention did him little
personal good.' It came after he was dead! While very few of today's
'attention getters' could aspire to be attended to for thousands of
years, they are able to pursue the benefits of attention from
many-maybe millions-of people via the Web throughout their lives
(ibid.). This, says Goldhaber, is what will constitute living very
well (on a sliding scale) in the new economy.
At the level of employing digital technologies,
working the attention economy can take on very different forms. Two
cases must suffice here. They will serve to make wider points as
well.
Early in 2000, a number of online magazines (e.g.,
Dreamcast 2000, Suck 2000) described one young man's special mission
and encouraged readers help him meet his goal. Walter, a
sixteen-year-old Canadian high school student described his special
mission on his website that was located within the Geocities
community (the now-defunct <http://www.oocities.org/Walters_Mission>). According to Walter's website, two girls from his
school had told him that one would have sex with him if his website
received a million hits within a given period. Pictures of Walter
were published alongside the articles featuring his mission
(Dreamcast 2000). They showed him to have an almost-shaved head,
braces on his teeth, sparse goatee, and what would generally pass for
an 'unattractive air'. Walter's mission spawned anti-Walter sites
(e.g., <http://www.oocities.org/walter_sucks>) and a sympathetic spoof in the form of an animated
sequence (Uglytouch.com 2000).
The articles urged readers to visit Walter's
website to help him complete his mission before his time ran out. The
response was overwhelming. According to Suck magazine, 'Walter's
[website] log ultimately showed referrals from 2630 sites, many
displaying banner ads in a show of solidarity, and sympathic visitors
flocked from around the world' (2000: 1). Some of these sources also
stated that while Walter's Special mission might be a hoax people
should visit his website anyway, in case the endeavor was for real
(cf., Dreamcast 2000). On the day we visited Walter's website-well
before the deadline set by his female peers-the only page that could
be accessed told in huge letters that the mission had been
accomplished. It also stated that due to still-heavy traffic to his
website Walter had been forced to remove it from the Internet.
In the second
case, Stephen Fitch, a graduate of MIT's
Media Lab, has developed a leather jacket containing in its
back
panel a complete Windows computer with a
'233-MHz Pentium III processor, a 1 Gigabyte IBM micro hard drive and
a broadband wireless Internet connection' (Kahney 2000: 1). The
jacket is being marketed as 'wearable advertising' and even comes
with 'a built-in infrared motion detector that can tell how many
people have seen it close up by sensing their body heat'
(Kahney
2000: 2). According to Fitch, the jacket
'allows people to use video as a form of self-expression' (Fitch
quoted in Kahney 2000: 1).
The jacket could be used in diverse ways as a
medium for initiating or mediating attention flows and transactions.
Some uses might essentially serve the owner's own attention seeking
interests simply by attracting the gaze of passersby and engaging
them in information (however briefly or superficially).
Alternatively, the owner might use the display as an initial point of
contact with potential customers for her or his own goods and
services. Likewise companies, advertisers, and 'stars' might hire
'jacket space' as part of their contact-making and
attention-attracting strategies. Many uses of the jacket display
might serve multiple attention interests conjointly. For example, if
the wearer was running a video for a popular band or a trailer for an
upcoming movie (that is, for 'stars'), s/he would simultaneously be
paying illusory attention to fans of the band or movie star,
transferring attention to the star, giving the star an opportunity
for paying illusory attention to the fans, and generating attention
for her/himself.
Fitch has formed a company called Hardwear
International (<http://www.hardwearcorp.com/>) to market the video jacket. His main company tagline
is 'The revolution will be televised'. Hollywood has already shown
keen interest, planning to display trailers for upcoming movies on
people's clothing. Fitch is currently also working on a range of
video jackets for children, as well as lunchboxes, handbags and hats
that all incorporate his video technology. Fitch says, 'I believe
display technology will be incorporated into our lives as a form of
personal expression' (Fitch quoted in Kahney 2000:2).
New literacies and the economics of
attention
On the basis of the ideas sketched above it is
reasonably easy to identify a range of typical 'new' literacies that
might become increasingly significant within an emerging economy of
attention. We will outline several such literacies here in embryonic
ways that will provide a base for potential further exploration and
development.
'Contact displaying': jackets (and similar gadgets)
that work
This is the idea of using highly customizable,
mobile, public media-like the video display jacket-to catch the eye
and establish a basis for gaining attention. Not every jacket will
'work' in an attention economy. Not every jacket owner/wearer will be
able to use it successfully as a means to gain and sustain real
attention. Moreover, the jacket itself (or any similar device) cannot
be the medium for sustained attention unless its wearer can claim a
'space' to which others 'return' in order to see what s/he is up to
today. More likely, a successful display will create an opportunity
to gain attention in the manner described by MacLeod-by establishing
initial contacts that may create the possibility to develop
relationships via attention transactions. This could take diverse
forms ranging from broadcasting arresting or entertaining 'display
bytes' that achieve their task of establishing a sense of identity
and presence instantaneously-in the moment of a passing by-to simply
announcing a product or service that can be 'taken down now' (e.g., a
URL, phone contact, email address) or memorized for following up
later. Part of displaying successfully is likely to be a matter of
'immediate effects' (rhetorical, quirky, stunning), but much will
likely be predicated on having something to say that is worth
hearing, something to sell that is worth buying, and so on.
Meme-ing
In his MEME email newsletter (see <http://memex.org/>), David Bennahum defines 'meme' thus:
meme: (pron. "meem") A
contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to
mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating
through communication networks and face-to-face contact between
people. Root of the word "memetics," a field of study which
postulates that the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution.
Examples of memes include melodies, icons, fashion statements and
phrases.
We have extended this definition to suggest a kind
of literacy that may prove very effective in gaining attention as
well as in constructing attention structures along the lines
described by Lanham. Meme-ing may be seen as a meta level literacy
whereby 'writers' (e.g., displayers, conventional authors,
advertisers, changemakers, publicizers, etc.) try to project into
cultural evolution by imitating the behavioral logic-replication-of
genes and viruses. This involves generating and transmitting a
successful meme, or becoming a high profile 'carrier' of a successful
meme. Meme-ing presupposes the existence or establishment of two
necessary conditions: 'susceptibility' (for contagion), and suitable
conditions for replication to occur.
Susceptibility is tackled by way of 'hooks' and
'catches'-by conceiving something that is likely to catch on or that
gets behind early warning systems and immunity (for example, even
well-honed critical perspectives can be infiltrated by textual
creations like Coca Cola's white swirl on red, or by the Nike icon).
Networks-e.g., communities of scholars, electronic networks-provide
ideal conditions for replication. Examples of successful memes and
their respective 'cloners', 'high profile carriers' or 'taggers'
include: 'cyberspace' (William Gibson), 'screenagers' (Douglas
Rushkoff), 'GenX' and 'Microserfs' (Doug
Coupland), 'the information superhighway' (Al Gore), 'global village'
(Marshall McLuhan), 'cyborgs' (Donna Haraway), 'clock of the long
now' (Stewart Brand and colleagues), 'complexity' (the Santa Fe
Group), D/discourse (James Gee), and so on. Obviously, for a meme to
be a way both of gaining attention and of bringing attention to a
particular individual or group, its cloners or key carriers must
somehow or other lay claim to it or otherwise publicly establish
their association with it.
'Scenariating'
Building or narrating scenarios is a good way of
coming up with original or fresh ideas of the kind needed to attract
and sustain attention. We think of it as a literacy because it is a
way of reading and writing the world (of the future).
Scenarios are catchy narratives that describe possible futures and
alternative paths toward the future, based on plausible hypotheses
and assumptions grounded in the present. Scenarios are not
predictions. Rather, building scenarios is a way of asking important
'what if?' questions: a means of helping groups of people change the
way they think about a problem (Rowan
and Bigum 1997: 73). Scenarios aim to
perceive possible futures in the present, encourage us to question
'conventional predictions of the future,' help us to recognize 'signs
of change' when they occur, and establish standards for evaluating
'continued use of different strategies under different conditions'
(ibid.).
Scenarios must narrate particular and credible
possible future worlds in the light of forces and influences that are
apparent or inchoate in the present, and that are likely to steer the
future in one direction or another if they get to play out. A typical
approach to generating scenarios is to bring a group of participants
together around a shared issue or concern and have them frame a
focusing question or theme within this area.
Once the question is framed, participants try to
identify 'driving forces' they see as operating and as being
important in terms of their question or theme. When these have been
thought through participants identify those forces or influences that
seem more or less 'pre-determined,' that will play out in more or
less known ways. Participants then identify less predictable
influences or uncertainties: key variables in shaping the future that
could be influenced or influence others in quite different ways, but
where we genuinely can't be confident about how they will play out.
From this latter set, one or two are selected as 'critical
uncertainties' (Rowan and Bigum 1997: 81). These are forces or
influences that seem especially important in terms of the focusing
question or theme but which are genuinely up for grabs and
unpredictable. The 'critical uncertainties' are then dimensionalised
by plotting credible poles: between possibilities that, at one pole
are not too unimaginative and, at the other, not too far fetched as
to be completely impossible. These become raw materials for building
scenarios.
In relation to the economics of attention,
'scenariating' is a potentially significant new literacy because it
provides a basis not only for coming up with innovative, original,
and interesting information, but also because it addresses a topic in
which almost everybody has a keen interest: what the future might be
like and how to prepare for it. Scenarios can work very well as
attention structures, providing frames within which people can work
on information in ways that make it useful. There are many reasons
for engaging adolescent students in activities of building and
narrating scenarios besides its potential value for participating in
an attention economy. The latter, however, would be sufficient reason
on its own because of its fruitfulness as a way of balancing
originality and freshness with sheer usefulness for human beings in
most areas of everyday life.
'Attention transacting'
This is based on MacLeod's idea of both-way
information flows grounded in reciprocal interest that create and
sustain relationships (2000: 7). 'Attention transacting' need not be
grounded in commercial or business motives. It is about knowing how
to elicit information from others, encouraging them to provide it
(with appropriate assurances), and knowing how to work with that
information so that it becomes an instrument for meeting what the
other party believes to be their needs or interests. These may be in
terms of goods, services, or more interpersonal concerns. To a large
extent there is nothing particularly new involved here. It is similar
to the kind of thing talk back radio hosts, psychoanalysts,
therapists, market researchers, and diverse kinds of consultants have
had to learn to do in the past using different media. What is new is
largely the use of new information technologies to obtain, interpret,
share, and act on information of a private nature, knowing how to
build and honor trust in online settings, knowing how to divulge and
interpret information obtained electronically in appropriate ways,
and so on. So far as formal education is concerned, of course, this
is an entirely new literacy because it projects into modes and
domains of life with which schools have not typically been
concerned-even in subject areas like business and commercial
practice. Interestingly, various 'meta' approaches to language and
literacy education, such as 'genre theory,' have access to theories
and concepts of direct relevance to developing such a new literacy.
Conventional curriculum and syllabus foci, however, have rarely
encouraged serious movement into the kinds of 'reading' and 'writing'
implicit in attention transacting. Many of these will have to be
invented 'on the fly' and by trial and error-as with so much that is
important to know in any period of transition.
'Culture jamming'
Culture jamming refers to counter-cultural
practices which critique, spoof, and otherwise confront elements of
mainstream or dominant culture. It relies on making incisive or
telling 'strikes' which manage to turn elements of mainstream culture
against themselves in a manner reminiscent of Michel de Certeau's
(1984) notion of 'tactics.' The logic of culture jamming tactics is
of gaining maximum attention with minimum resources or inputs.
A good example of culture jamming is provided by
Adbusters (see Adbusters Culture Jamming Headquarters at
<http://www.adbusters.org/>). A sequence of highly polished web pages comprising
slick and clean designs present information about Adbusters and its
purposes. They describe an array of culture jamming campaigns,
subject worthy media events and advertising, cultural practices, and
overbloated corporate globalisation to knife-sharp critiques in the
form of parodies or exposs of corporate wheelings and dealings, and
undertake online information tours that focus on social issues (see
also Rushkoff 1996). The following graphic, which depicts the true
colors of 'Benetton', is a typical example of culture jamming as
literacy. It shows how the act of 'tweaking' readily available
resources available as images and texts can produce direct and
bitingly honest social commentaries. These are commentaries that
everyone everywhere is able to read-a form of global literacy which
has the potential to catch the attention of almost any population,
whether or not they share the text's inherent values.
In terms of attention, culture jamming
organisations such as Adbusters turn media attention-grabbing tactics
on their head to critique the mechanisms by which people 'buy into'
consuming items or ideas.
'Transferring' (or 'trickle across')
The principle of transferring is apparent each
time one uses a search engine to locate information on a
well-recognized expert or authority and turns up a student
assignment, or reads a journal article that takes the form of an
interview with a well known person conducted (and published) by a
much less (or un)known person, or when one happens upon web pages and
zines lovingly assembled by fans. Transferring is based on the
principle that 'you have to be in to win.' If one has something to
say or offer that might otherwise remain unrecognized and unknown,
one has nothing to lose by hitching it to or bundling it up with a
personality or theme that enjoys a good deal of attention. This
literacy may involve nothing more than inserting references or
hyperlinks into a text published on the world wide web. At a more
complex level, it may involve negotiating an interview, conducting,
editing, and 'thematising' the interview, and then getting it placed
for publication.
'Framing and 'encapsulating': Beyond
keywords
Lanham makes an important and interesting point in
his comment on the 'hot search for software intelligence agents that
will create "gateways" of one sort or another without further human
intervention' (loc. cit). This endeavour has developed in conjunction
with attempts to define 'information literacy' and identify the kinds
of skills-e.g., locating maximally efficient keywords-integral to
being informationally literate. The other side to this literacy,
which relates more directly to attention, was evident in the
discourse of 'tricks' to use when registering your web site to ensure
it comes near the top of the list of returned keyword searches-or, at
any rate, finds a place as often as possible within the kinds of
searches people are likely to do about the things one has to
offer.
This is useful so far as it goes. But Lanham is
pitching for higher and richer stakes in his focus on attention
structures: in short, ways of framing information that hook us into
organizing our interests within an area in this way rather than that;
or in ways of encapsulating information that stand out because they
are especially attractive or interesting. This involves the kind of
analytical and theoretical work that puts someone sufficiently 'on
top of' a subject or area to allow them to find 'angles' that attract
and compel. Notions like 'a brief history of time,' or of
'Pythagoras' trousers', of 'a language instinct' or of 'things biting
back' are reasonably familiar (if high end) examples.
The point here is that reading and writing the
world (of information) is very different from the kind of approach
evident in key words and the like. The same kind of difference is
evident in titles for works: some (like the examples listed above)
are frames and (en)capsules; others are more like keywords (accurate,
functional, but short on inspiration). The best, of course, are both.
Their production encapsulates the kind of literacy we have in mind
here.
A challenge for schools
There are many other new literacies we have
neither time nor space to think about and sketch here. For example,
literacies that go with 'smarts' in design, that get the mix right
within 'multimediated' productions, and so on. Hopefully, the
examples sketched here will be sufficient to indicate and illustrate
the nature and extent of the challenge facing formal education if we
believe schools ought to be paying more attention to attention. It is
worth noting that all the 'new' literacies identified here are
'higher order' and/or 'meta literacies.' Some are good for creating
opportunities to gain attention, others for facilitating and
structuring attention, and others for getting and maintaining
attention. Some are good for a combination of these. Few are closely
related to most of what passes for literacy in schools today.
Indeed, prior to even addressing the more specific
issues of literacy in relation to preparing students for effective
participation in an attention economy it is important to note that
attention is currently constituted mainly as a problem for schools.
On one hand, 'attention seeking' is closely associated-often cited as
a cause-with behavioural problems. On the other hand, learning
difficulties are often attributed to 'short attention spans' or
'attention deficiency syndrome'. Thus, schools are simultaneously
caught between trying to reduce and increase attention.
Interestingly, the postmodern world of the Web,
channel surfing, and 'playing the future' (Rushkoff 1996) and the
postmaterialist world of the attention economy openly embrace
tendencies that currently constitute problems for schools. Perhaps it
is time for us in formal education to rethink the issue of attention,
and quite possibly the interface between digital technologies and new
literacies provides a good place to start.
For many of us this will almost certainly involve
a challenge to existing mindsets. Cathie Walker, self-styled Queen of
the Internet, creator of the Centre for the Easily Amused and
co-founder of forkinthehead.com, offers an early warning of what that
challenge might involve. In 'Short attention spans on the web'
(reprinted at <http://www.sitelaunch.net/attention.htm>), she
confesses to having once read in a magazine that if you don't grab
the average web surfer's attention within 10 seconds they'll be out
of your site. She immediately qualifies that claim by admitting that
she doesn't remember whether the exact figure was 10 seconds because
her attention-span 'isn't that great either' (ibid).
If we can 'hack' that kind of entree, and accept
her celebration of the short attention span as a basic assumption for
effective web site design, the five short paragraphs that follow in
Walker's statement provide an engaging perspective on literacy in
relation to attention. It is a perspective that may well offer more
to adolescent and young adult students than much that is to be found
in our most venerated and most-cited tomes. If nothing else it would
provide a class with serious grist for problematising 'attention' and
evaluating literacies that pitch for attention. Our own web site
observes none of her recommendations, but it doubtless receives
almost infinitely fewer visitors as well.
At the opposite extreme, we note that almost
everything the sources we have cited on the economics of the
attention economy point to the importance of having a good grasp of
theory and analysis. This is not necessarily an explicit grasp of
highbrow theory and analysis. The ideas surveyed owe as much to the
tradition of Geek philosophers as to the tradition of Greek
philosophers. They uniformly assume that an emphasis on content and
lower order skills is not enough. The kinds of competencies
associated with successfully engaging the economics of attention are
those that come with the capacity to research aspects of the world as
opposed to merely looking at them or receiving them as content.
Once again, this does not imply a highbrow or
academic approach to research, although these will be advantageous if
other things are in place-such as an interest in 'angles', an
interest in originality, willingness to take risks, and so on.
Rather, the generic sense of 'research' that we have in mind is
inherent in the very kinds of new literacies we have begun to
identify here, and which we think it is now time for us to explore,
develop, and encourage as the core of the high school literacy
curriculum. While imaginative and expansive use of new digital
technologies is not a necessary facet of such literacies (c.f.,
scenariating, transferring, meme-ing, framing, encapsulating), they
certainly enhance and enrich their scope and possibilities.
If we continue to believe that formal education
has something to do with helping prepare (young) people for the world
they will enter, it will be worth exploring further conceptions and
implications of the economics of attention, and relating them to our
conceptions and practices of literacy education within formal
settings.
References:
Adler, R. (1997). The
Future of Advertising: New Approaches to the Attention
Economy. Washington D.C.: The Aspen
Institute.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life.
Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dreamcast (2000).
Walter needs us! June 27. Downloaded 4 November, 2000
<http://dreamcast.ign.com/news/21457.html>
Gilster, P. (1997). Digital Literacy. New York: John
Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Goldhaber, M. (1997). The attention economy and
the net. First Monday <http://firstmonday.dk/
issues/ issue2_4/goldhaber/>.
Downloaded 2/06/2000.
Goldhaber, M. (1998a) The attention economy will
change everything. Telepolis <http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/1419/1.html>. Downloaded 30/07/2000.
Goldhaber, M. (1998b) M.H. Goldhaber's principles
of the new economy. <http://www.well.com/
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2/06/2000.
Kahney, L. (2000). Video Clothes: 'Brand' New
Idea. Wired Online. June 7. Downloaded 07/06/2000. <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36698,00.html>
Lanham, R. (1994). The economics of attention.
Proceedings of 124th Annual Meeting, Association of Research
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ps2econ.html>. Downloaded
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MacLeod, R. (2000). Attention marketing in the
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<http://www.esomar.nl/congress2000/congress2000_programme.htm> Personal copy of paper provided by author.
Rowan, L. and Bigum, C. (1998). The future of
technology and literacy teaching in primary learning situations and
contexts. In Lankshear, C., Bigum, C. et al. (investigators) Digital
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Literacy National Projects. Brisbane: QUT/DEETYA.
Rushkoff, D. (1996). Playing the Future: How Kids' Culture Can Teach Us to
Survive in an Age of Chaos. New York:
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Simon, H. (1971). Designing organizations for an
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Tunbridge, N. (1995). The cyberspace cowboy.
Australian Personal
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Uglytouch.com (2000). 'Toons. Downloaded 4
November, 2000
<http://www.uglytouch.com/toons/toons.html>
Walker, C. (1998). Short attention spans on the
web. Reprinted with permission at <http//www.launchsite.net/attention.htm> Downloaded 2/06/2000.
Wriston, W. (1997). The Twilight of Sovereignty:
How the Information Revolution is Transforming Our World.
Bridgewater, NJ: Replica Books.
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To be published in:
Alvermann, D. (Ed.). New Literacies and Digital
Technologies: A Focus on Adolescent Learners. New York: Peter
Lang.