And if we assume attention is valuable, while everything else is valueless, we've been pretty good at destroying what's valuable for what's valueless in the past century.
Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us.
Some of us pour our attention into hour long commutes where we spend our utmost effort not to give attention to anyone near us - it might make them uncomfortable.
Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even.
We spend our time fine-tuning our processes to be as "efficient" as possible, from the queue in the supermarket, to the queue in the fast food restaurant, to reduce our shopkeepers and waiters to mere actors following a script efficiently, and in some cases, completely replace them with machines.
We make our workplace a place where colleagues gather for majority of their lives, but make it difficult to form enduring long term friendships.
We spend lots of time worrying about economic inequality but much less time about attention inequality. The only relevant policy we do have is subsidised psychologic care.
It's inhumane to deny human food, that's why we provide welfare. It's inhumane to neglect a child's need for parental love, which is why we place orphans in foster homes (not perfect). And what about adults, what do we do about attention inequality in terms of family, friendship, and sexual partners? We just sort of leave it up to them to figure it out, and then when we read about suicides in the paper, we write a comment "if you feel this way please seek help immediately".
This is a summary of what I find wrong about modern society, and I have no solution besides enjoying the giving of time to those close to me when they ask for it.
We've become a lot more efficient trading away our attention for physical goods that don't really matter to us except to trade in a zero sum game for more attention.
I'm excited to see the phrase "attention inequality". I've had similar thoughts for a few years and suspect that's a fertile line of inquiry.
I haven't gotten far enough along in thinking about it to say anything very clear, but I think the relationship between our attitudes about wealth inequality vs attention inequality is important and telling.
To many who don't think deeply, wealth inequality is terrible while attention inequality is natural and no big deal.
The two kinds of inequality cause each other, which is also interesting. But mostly I'm interested in how our attitudes about one kind can or cannot, must or must not, apply to the other.
EDIT: To circle back to your point, I disagree that attention can be "destroyed". I prefer to say that attention can never be destroyed, only shifted from one thing to another. So if you are ignoring your family and playing video games, you have not destroyed your attention, you have instead shifted it to the video game (and its creators).
True, everyone has 24 hours a day, though what I really mean is the utility of that attention can be destroyed - the utility of 10 hours of your attention for the video game creator is measured in tens of dollars but could be priceless to your children.
And I'm happy you are excited to see this phrase. :-)
> Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us.
> Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even.
I think you've got this backwards. Those technologies are ways for the people who have the most attention to give out more attention than they could ever possibly do in person. They're precisely what makes the attention economy positive-sum.
You're saying that the video game or the celebrity is giving attention to the person watching it? Either I don't understand your comment, or you are the one who has it backwards...
I can see how that's true in MMORPG's, but what about single player games? You could argue they give the temporary feeling of receiving attention, but it goes away when we stop partaking in that activity and we don't receive actual benefits of receiving attention - it was smoke and mirrors.
When you spend an hour with your child, the child matures by another hour worth of your attention. The relationship also becomes an hour stronger, plus you gain memories associated with the hour. With single player games there is only the memory, no relationship building and no nurturing provided. Good observation about most games make us someone important.
It's certainly possible to learn and mature from one's experience in single-player gaming. And many games give the experience of developing a relationship.
A game can give the illusion of a relationship, but it is not a real relationship with another human being. The evolutionary reasons why we need relationships are because having other humans care about us helps us live better lives. A game, which does not care about you, may partially satisfy that evolved need but cannot provide any of the real-world benefits of an actual relationship with an actual person who actually cares about you.
You're begging the question. Games already fill human needs - that's why we play them - and things like entertainment are no less real-world than physical objects. I believe Love Plus already e.g. buys players gifts (based on their wishlists)? A game won't yet do things like taking care of you if you're sick, sure, but I suspect that's only a matter of time.
You think I am begging the question because you think that
> things like entertainment are no less real-world than physical objects.
but this is false.
A relationship in the real world with a human being is not the same thing as a relationship with an AI that you interact with through a screen. It is less real. Are you still experiencing feeling? Yes. Are you communicating? Yes. Is it real? Yes, of course it is real, just like my iPhone is real, servers in a datacenter somewhere are real, and the medium is real even though it is a different medium. Nonetheless, it is less real because it is not a human being.
From an evolutionary perspective, we enjoy certain things (type A) because they lead to other things (type B) that make our survival and reproduction more likely. This is what the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy is about. When a machine process gives you the type A things but of course cannot ever give you the type B benefits that actually created those evolutionary pressures, then you are on some level being fooled. When I say "less real" this is what I am talking about.
The fact that you point out that a game won't take care of you while you are sick shows me that you get my point.
Email in my profile if you want to take the discussion further. It's getting a bit off-topic here but I am interested in the topic, and yes, in the real, human conversation we are having. ;-)
Some of us pour our attention into games and movies instead of sharing it with those close to us.
Some of us pour our attention into hour long commutes where we spend our utmost effort not to give attention to anyone near us - it might make them uncomfortable.
Some of us pour our attention on those who already have a lot of it, who cannot possibly return it to us - famous youtube personalities, celebrities, porn stars even.
We spend our time fine-tuning our processes to be as "efficient" as possible, from the queue in the supermarket, to the queue in the fast food restaurant, to reduce our shopkeepers and waiters to mere actors following a script efficiently, and in some cases, completely replace them with machines.
We make our workplace a place where colleagues gather for majority of their lives, but make it difficult to form enduring long term friendships.
We spend lots of time worrying about economic inequality but much less time about attention inequality. The only relevant policy we do have is subsidised psychologic care.
It's inhumane to deny human food, that's why we provide welfare. It's inhumane to neglect a child's need for parental love, which is why we place orphans in foster homes (not perfect). And what about adults, what do we do about attention inequality in terms of family, friendship, and sexual partners? We just sort of leave it up to them to figure it out, and then when we read about suicides in the paper, we write a comment "if you feel this way please seek help immediately".
This is a summary of what I find wrong about modern society, and I have no solution besides enjoying the giving of time to those close to me when they ask for it.
We've become a lot more efficient trading away our attention for physical goods that don't really matter to us except to trade in a zero sum game for more attention.