Attention by Design: Meditation Apps and the Construction of Mindbody Capacities

• In Event: Attention! - I: Human/Machine Boundaries

Abstract

Drawing upon one year of ethnographic fieldwork with creators and users of meditation apps, this paper explores how the analytic of “attention” is deployed across different scales and contexts to render visions of a better, healthier person—one whose mind and body co-exist harmoniously with digital tools through the honing of self-awareness.

While technologists use contemporary crises of attention to justify their development of meditation apps as a technique for becoming more human, users of meditation apps interpret these tools as a path towards becoming more alive, through the process of paying attention. Ironically, the same people often express concern that dominant digital platforms such as Facebook and the smartphone dilute—and possibly deaden—human consciousness, by compromising people’s ability to think, feel, sense, and experience. I argue that while the interpretive flexibility of digital technology allows these seemingly contradictory beliefs and practices to run side by side, the lack of precision regarding what “attention” means can be dangerous—reifying passive awareness as a sign of human intelligence, while absolving people from taking the action needed to genuinely improve life.

This research contributes to longstanding STS conversations regarding digital health and human-machine relations, while also opening up space to explore the analytic of “attention” in future STS research.

Author

• Rebecca Jablonsky, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute