Michael H Goldhaber on Wed, 4 Jul 2007 09:06:08 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re:<nettime> SHOWING |
Jordan's interesting observation parallels my predictions for a long time about an economy based on the desire for and scarcity of attention from others. Self-revelation is generally a good way to garner attention, or to add to attention one gets from the already attentive. Whether the lack he proposes is internal to the psyche or simply a consequence of the normal human need for attention, and its increasing scarcity as a result of the intensified competition for it, I am not so sure. The abundance of "surplus energy" is also a valid point, in that the forms of energetic activities such as farming or manufacturing work that had to be carried on by the majority in the past have now been out-moded, leading to affluent searches for outlets for many in the "advanced" world, and much more impoverished searches for the same for others in the same countries and even more in the others. the rise of the Attention Society is one result. ( The phrase "Attention Economy" which I long have used for this new "mode of production" has apparently been bowdlerized to mean something having to do with advertising, so I am returning to an older phrase.) Often the outlet in the poorest countries is constant war, making them even poorer. ( This comes out, in spite of everything , in pro- imperialist Niall Fergusons's NY Times review of conservative(?) Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/books/review/Ferguson- t.html_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin. ) One can hope that as cheaper ways to use the Internet proliferate even there, and as new methods of seeking attention, or at least the capacity to play Grand Theft Auto are spread, war will not seem as good an outlet even among the poorest. There might even be some amelioration of poverty resulting from new attention-getting capacity. As to the desire to show oneself, this seems to come naturally to infants and small children. Then culture takes over. Standard, Calvinist-influenced capitalist (and socialist) upbringing was against "beign noticed" but with the rise of the attention society, this is now changing. Best, Michael PS see my blog http://goldhaber.org for more on many of these topics. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net