Ezra Klein and Jenny Odell on taking our attention and technology seriously

“In ‘How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,’ [visual artist Jenny] Odell suggests that any theory of media must first start with a theory of attention. ‘One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious,’ she writes.

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 notice and what we do not — are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. These aspects, taken together, suggest to me the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention.

“I think Odell frames both the question and the stakes correctly. Attention is contagious. What forms of it, as individuals and as a society, do we want to cultivate? What kinds of mediums would that cultivation require?

“This is anything but an argument against technology, were such a thing even coherent. It’s an argument for taking technology as seriously as it deserves to be taken, for recognizing, as [media theorist Marshall] McLuhan’s friend and colleague John M. Culkin put it, ‘we shape our tools, and thereafter, they shape us.’”

— excerpted from Klein, E. (2022, August 7). I didn’t want it to be true, but the medium really is the message. The New York Times.