The Sirens' Call

1. Attention is the Scarce Resource of the Information Age.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

Information abundance creates attention poverty. In a world overflowing with data and stimuli, the real scarcity is not information, which is infinite and easily copied, but human attention, which is finite and cannot be in multiple places at once. This fundamental imbalance makes attention supremely valuable. Economist Herbert Simon identified this dynamic early, noting that a wealth of information necessarily creates a poverty of attention, requiring us to allocate this scarce resource efficiently.

Attention is the new gold. Unlike physical resources like land or oil, attention is embedded within our minds, yet it has become the most important commodity in the modern economy. Companies like Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon, often seen as information or retail giants, are more accurately understood as attention companies. They build systems designed to capture and monetize our focus, recognizing that value derives from scarcity, and attention is the ultimate scarce resource in the digital age.

Attention is fundamental to life. Beyond its economic value, attention is the very substance of our conscious experience; "My experience," as William James wrote, "is what I agree to attend to." It is also a primal human need, essential for survival from infancy. This intrinsic value and biological necessity make the battle for our attention, waged by corporations and platforms, feel deeply personal and transformative, impacting everything from our inner lives to collective public discourse.

2. Commodified Attention Leads to Alienation.

The attention age has made Willy Lomans of us all.

Attention as a fictitious commodity. Just as industrial capitalism transformed human effort into "labor"—a standardized commodity bought and sold—the attention age transforms our focus into "clicks," "eyeballs," and "engagement," units of attention that can be traded in sophisticated markets. This process, described by Karl Polanyi as creating "fictitious commodities," takes something integral to our humanity and abstracts it for market exchange, leading to a sense of estrangement from our own minds.

Alienation from our inner lives. This commodification results in a subjective feeling of alienation, a sense that our attention, which constitutes our inner life, is being taken and directed against our will. We feel divided and distracted, struggling to control where our thoughts rest. This mirrors the alienation Marx described in workers separated from the products of their labor, but it is more intimate, as the resource being extracted is our very consciousness.

The tension between value and price. In attention capitalism, the price of individual units of attention (like a single click or view) is driven down by increasing competition and efficiency, even as attention as a collective resource becomes more valuable. This cheapening of our focus in market terms clashes with its immense subjective value, creating a tension that fuels the feeling of alienation – our most precious internal resource is being sold off in tiny, devalued slivers.

3. Social Attention: A Primal Need Exploited Online.

We are built and formed by attention; destroyed by neglect.

Survival depends on social attention. From the moment of birth, human infants are utterly helpless and rely entirely on the attention and care of others for survival. This deep biological inheritance means we are fundamentally wired to seek and respond to the attention of other humans. Deprivation of social attention, as seen in solitary confinement, can lead to severe psychological distress and even death.

Social attention is distinct. Unlike voluntary or involuntary attention, social attention is focused on other people and is inherently bidirectional – we pay attention to others, and they pay attention to us. This reciprocity forms the basis of all human relationships. However, social attention can also be unilateral (like a stranger's gaze) and can carry negative emotional content, making it a complex and sometimes painful aspect of human interaction.

Online platforms exploit this need. Social media platforms are engineered to tap into our primal need for social attention. Features like notifications, mentions, likes, and comments trigger our innate response to being noticed, creating a gamified system of social approval. This provides a synthetic version of recognition, which is what we truly crave, but because it often comes from strangers we cannot recognize in return, it leaves us feeling "stuffed and starved"—overwhelmed by attention yet starved of genuine connection.

4. The Slot Machine Model: Grabbing Attention Iteratively.

It is easier to grab attention than to hold it.

The core challenge: holding attention. While capturing attention initially can be achieved through simple, often jarring stimuli (like a loud noise or a shocking headline, tapping into involuntary attention), sustaining voluntary attention requires engaging content and effort. This fundamental asymmetry means that in competitive attention markets, the easier path is to repeatedly grab attention rather than attempt the harder task of holding it for extended periods.

Iterative grabbing dominates. The "slot machine model" exemplifies this approach. Like a slot machine with its quick cycles of suspense and resolution, social media feeds (infinite scroll), many video games, and even cable news formats are designed to constantly provide novel stimuli that grab our attention for brief moments, over and over again. This bypasses the need to create content that holds attention through depth or narrative, opting instead for a relentless series of small, attention-capturing events.

Addiction by design. This model leverages our neurological wiring for novelty and reward, creating experiences that are intensely compelling and can consume vast amounts of time in small increments. The goal is to keep users in a state of perpetual engagement, a "machine zone" where they are constantly reacting to new stimuli. This explains why screen time averages are so high, accumulated not through sustained focus but through countless seconds of iterative attention capture.

5. Spam: The Defining Problem of the Attention Age.

Spam is all the things we don’t want to pay attention to that want our attention.

Exploiting pooled attention. Spam, broadly defined, is the use of communication infrastructure to exploit existing aggregations of human attention for one's own benefit. From early Usenet newsgroups to email, political texts, and social media feeds, wherever people gather and pay attention, spammers emerge to try and capture that attention, often with commercial or political aims.

A consequence of low marginal cost. The digital age makes the marginal cost of soliciting attention incredibly low – sending millions of emails or posting countless messages costs next to nothing. This incentivizes a relentless barrage of unwanted solicitations. This contrasts sharply with the high personal cost of being distracted, creating a fundamental tension where spammers waste our time for their benefit.

An iron law of the attention age. Any technology or platform that successfully aggregates and conserves attention inevitably becomes a target for spam. Just as weeds thrive in fertile soil, spam flourishes wherever attention collects. This creates a constant battle between systems designed to filter unwanted information and those designed to bypass those filters, a dynamic that degrades the quality and usefulness of digital spaces.

6. The Collapse of Attentional Regimes in Public Life.

In our own attention age, the most important trait is the ability to get attention, above all else.

From structured debate to chaos. Historically, public discourse was governed by "attentional regimes"—formal rules (like debate formats, parliamentary procedure) and informal norms (like turn-taking in conversation) that regulated who spoke when and where attention was directed. Examples like the Lincoln-Douglas debates showcase a time when sustained focus on complex issues was possible within such structures.

Erosion of shared focus. Modern media, particularly television and the internet, have progressively dismantled these regimes. The shift from print to image, from long-form to soundbites, and from shared communal viewing to individualized screens has made it increasingly difficult to establish and maintain collective attention on any single topic or set of ideas.

Attention becomes the sole currency. In the absence of effective attentional regimes, the ability to simply get attention, by any means necessary, becomes the primary determinant of influence in the public sphere. This leads to a "war of all against all" for focus, where loudness, controversy, and spectacle often triumph over substance, reasoned argument, or even truth.

7. Trolling, Whataboutism, and Conspiracism: Symptoms of Attentional Chaos.

When attention becomes the only thing that matters in public life, several other related forms of public discourse bloom like mold and begin to overtake everything else.

Discourse adapted for attention. In an environment where getting attention is paramount and traditional attentional regimes have collapsed, certain forms of communication flourish because they are highly effective at capturing focus, even at the expense of productive discourse. Trolling, whataboutism, and conspiracism are prime examples of this adaptation.

Trolling: attention via provocation. Trolling involves intentionally making outrageous, offensive, or inflammatory statements to elicit a reaction and gain attention. Online platforms, which reward engagement and often detach interaction from real-world consequences, provide fertile ground for trolling. This creates a dilemma: ignoring trolls allows their harmful messages to spread, but engaging them gives them the attention they crave.

Whataboutism: shifting the focus. Whataboutism is a rhetorical tactic used to deflect criticism by pointing to perceived hypocrisy or wrongdoing by the accuser or another party ("What about X?"). While sometimes a valid challenge to double standards, in the attention age it often serves as a cynical ploy to derail discussion, evade accountability, and shift the limited pool of public attention away from uncomfortable topics.

Conspiracism: compelling but false narratives. Conspiracy theories thrive because they are often more attention-grabbing and emotionally compelling than complex, messy reality. They offer simple explanations, secret knowledge, and a sense of being a hero uncovering hidden truths. In a competitive attention environment, shocking but false narratives can easily outcompete mundane truths, contributing to a polluted information landscape and widespread adherence to dangerous delusions.

8. Reclaiming Our Minds: Personal, Market, and Regulatory Paths Forward.

We need to use every tool and strategy imaginable to wrest back our will, to create a world where we point our attention where we, the willful, conscious “we,” want it to go.

The gap between desire and reality. We often feel a disconnect between what we want to pay attention to (family, hobbies, meaningful activities) and what we actually pay attention to (scrolling feeds, notifications, unwanted solicitations). Reclaiming our minds begins with acknowledging this gap and consciously choosing to direct our attention according to our values, like Odysseus binding himself to the mast to resist the Sirens.

Alternative attention markets. Just as movements for organic food and local farming created alternatives to industrial food production, there is potential for growth in businesses and technologies that offer alternatives to the dominant attention-commodification model. Examples like the resurgence of vinyl records or the preference for physical newspapers suggest a demand for experiences that encourage commitment, quality, and intentional focus over endless, fragmented consumption.

Noncommercial spaces and regulation. Creating noncommercial digital spaces, like encrypted group chats or nonprofit platforms, allows for social connection and shared attention without the pressure to monetize every interaction. Furthermore, regulation, similar to labor laws that
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Last updated: May 28, 2025