
The Rationalization of the Attention Market - mschrage
http://blogs.harvard.edu/mattschrage/2019/01/22/the-rationalization-of-the-attention-market/
======
rayvy
> So it is possible to resist, but we are not all Jimmy Wales. The pressure to
> submit is overwhelming. On the level of the employee, there is the specter
> of unemployment. To willfully reject the logic of the market is to be
> rightfully terminated. But the pressure to conform to its demands exists at
> every level. The executive, though better paid, is essentially in the same
> position as the janitor. To resist is to go. Even the founder, the inventor,
> the owner, the celebrity is precariously positioned. While they might be
> spared termination at the hands of management, in the long run, they too end
> up in the same place. In 1938, Bill Paley, the chief executive of CBS,
> presciently stated that “too often the machine runs away with itself”
> (Friendly 168). To obstruct the machine is to be crushed by it. To refuse to
> go along is to be replaced. Everyone and everything is fungible.

> When it comes meaning in media, we are confronted with an unpalatable
> choice. Either stable meaning imposed through deliberative control by the
> few (as tyranny) or the autonomous, impersonal and invisible hand of the
> attention market, which, in the end, results in the “liquidation of meaning”
> (Baudrillard 84). Any point in between is an unstable equilibrium. And one
> can at least negotiate with a tyrant.

A slightly depressing ending to arrive at but an amazing read

~~~
aklemm
“Any point in between is an unstable equilibrium.”

That is the conundrum defining my aldulthood (roughly the “internet era”); and
it creates confusion and despair. It’s especially painful because I’d expected
hope and enlightenment.

~~~
CuriousSkeptic
The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false
dichotomy though.

Why is it that the invisible hand must govern desperate people? Could we not
keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people
are safe enough to say no?

~~~
pjc50
> Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world
> where people are safe enough to say no?

That requires the provision of safety and security outside of market
mechanisms. This is where "basic income" (security against destitution, but
still using the market) and "universal healthcare" (variety of not-quite-
market options) are coming from.

It also requires some kind of firewalling of political and psychological
security against market mechanisms, otherwise the invisible hand will reach
back in to exploit people's unsafety.

~~~
zozbot123
It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion
as well - _especially_ if what you care about is countering the negatives of
the "attention market". Traditional societies are actually very good at this,
thanks to their highly-refined social structures which mesh well with human
social ("tribe") instincts. Modern-day societies that try to be "market-based"
to a rather extreme extent are a lot more atomized. You _can_ deal with that
if you're lucky enough to have relatively-high income or wealth, but it's
essentially a crappy, inefficient band-aid-- and the people in "relative
poverty" are still SOL.

~~~
erikb
> It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social
> inclusion as well

Isn't it curious that we need to provide this as external source of safety?
I'm not disagreeing, I also think so, but it's still surprising.

If we think about that "the machine" is objective, and that it can look into
our hearts, that it wants to reach as many of us as possible, and wants to
convince us to do its bidding by positive feedback loops, then why doesn't
provide safety and security as a default?

Makes me wonder if our feedback loop is somehow "buggy" and that the feedback
loop and our needs are not really correlating that much.

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323454
I can rarely make heads or tails of the media theorists like McLuhan,
Foucault, Baudrillard but this essay is both lucid and concrete. Well done to
the author.

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gdubs
The Karl Marx quote about the Iliad and the printing press is interesting. I’m
re-reading the Iliad at the moment, and I’ve thought about how different it
must be in the original Greek, or recited orally. It’s still an incredible
work, printed or not.

I guess it’s a bit like Marx wondering if “The Godfather” can exist in a world
of 15 second vertical videos.

But it’s also an old question.

Socrates: Writing will destroy society.

Plato: [scribbles]

Socrates: Plato, what are you doing?

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blogosphere
God, so much huffing and puffing. Such a wind bag. None of this guy’s stuff is
pointing in the right direction.

He’s looking at twentieth century struggles, but the artifice that he grapples
with in long form text is not what the drivers of change were.

What he points to is a microvave oven boiling water, in a kitchen with a
grease fire. The technologies of socialization are like cotton candy, when
stood next to the architecture of behaviors that insulate socialites and
enable socialization at all.

But then again, I suppose he gets to show off all the books he’s read, and
broadcast nerd signals about how much navel gazing he does. That’s what blogs
are about, right?

