The Ecology of Attention

as much as the feeds brought me things I never would have seen or heard otherwise, my overdependence on them was also cutting me off from a different realm of experiences that I had forgotten about over the course of the decade: the encounter with scarcity rather than infinity, the process of judging and choosing for myself what I wanted to see in

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One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to noti

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Occupying the “third space” within the attention economy is important not just because, as I’ve argued, individual attention forms the basis for collective attention and thus for meaningful refusal of all kinds. It is also important because in a time of shrinking margins, when not only students but everyone else has “put the pedal to the metal,” an

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Attention – the ultimate currency of our time. Our screens gobble it up, promising connection but delivering distraction. What looks like hyperconnectivity masks a deeper disconnect from the tangible world around us. And so, what we lose is a sense of being part of something real, a place and community that hold meaning.

The path forward runs throug... See more