The Attention Economy: History, Theory, Resistance

Oct. 4th - Oct. 21st, 2023

Attention is the touchstone problem of our age. Over the last twenty years, an unprecedented concentration of technical and financial power has successfully monetized human attention — with troubling implications for social, political, and individual existence. New networks of data collection, and new (and newly intimate) technologies of access now work continuously to tap the human subject for the most fleeting traces of our attention, since each glance can now be priced, and the aggregate buying and selling of our mind-time and eye-life is the core driver of a vast new economy — the so-called "Attention Economy."

In this course, we will survey the historical context for the emergence of the Attention Economy from the advent of advertising in the mid-twentieth to the present moment. We'll explore the theoretical and political implications of the monetization of attention, and survey contemporary strategies to reclaim our attention, both individually and collectively. We'll draw on texts by Karl Marx, Guy Debord, Shoshana Zuboff, Tim Wu,  and Yves Citton among others. What do the extractive incursions of the Attention Economy mean for shared life in the twenty-first century — and how might we resist them?

Co-taught by Sonali Chakravarti, D. Graham Burnett, and Jac Mullen

Classes on Wednesdays, 7:00 - 9:00pm
Oct. 4th - Oct 18th
138 S. Oxford Street, Brooklyn

The course culminated in a public, free Attention Lab:
12:00 - 3:00pm
Saturday, Oct. 21st,