Attention! - I: Human/Machine Boundaries

Abstract

In recent years, attention has become a topic of increasing public concern. Digital distractions, addictive design patterns, and ad-driven platforms are said to be decreasing individual attention spans; political crises are described as canny distractions or failures of collective attention. Meanwhile, academic critics call for new forms of attention as solutions to analytic and political problems. This panel will draw together work that attends to attention, using the analytic tools of STS to foreground “attention” itself as an object bound up with the social production of knowledge, scientific and technical infrastructures, and broader discourses of economic value and cultural values. What work does the concept of attention perform in popular and expert conversations? How might closer attention to attention interrupt common sense discourses about its value and purpose? What work can attention perform, when it is attended to with greater precision and care?

Chair

• Tero Karppi, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Attention by Design: Meditation Apps and the Construction of Mindbody Capacities - Rebecca Jablonsky, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

• Buzz, Tap, Zap: The Attentional Economy of Haptic Wearables - Natasha Schull, NYU - MCC

• Distracted Attention, or: Mindful Algorithms and the Algorithms of Mindfulness - Johannes Bruder, FHNW Academy of Art and Design

• Homo Attentus: Technological Backlash and the Attentional Subject - Nick Seaver, Tufts University

Session Organizer

• Nick Seaver, Tufts University