Internet for Intimacy and Revolutionary Attention Economics

Stefana Broadbent delivered a short and easily overlooked talk at TED in July of 2009. In this talk she argues that the internet, and all of its ancillary parts (cellphones, webcams, VOIP, etc.) are not causing people to cocoon themselves and cut off from others, but are instead being used to maintain connections to family members in environments that have traditionally been family free zones.

The "workplace" has become the opposite of the "private" or "social place" the employer has grown accustomed to the employee having undivided attention on the task set before them. But now the work/private divide that has grown up in the last 150 years is being short circuited by the convergence of social technology and the desire of people to connect with the people that matter in their lives.

Photo From Moriza on Flickr

Puran Lucas Perez, a resident of nearby Ontario, commented on the talk in a way that sparked an idea. He wrote:

Your talk seems to point beyond social transformation to a new revolutionary attitude; one not focused on overthrowing anything, but on 'self-determining attention'. Since action naturally follows attention, will this not enable us increasingly to give our hands and hearts to the things that really matter to us?

For those unfamiliar with the idea of Attention Economics, quickly and basically (and from wikipedia) "Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems."

So in the world of Attention Economics, Stefana Broadbent is a V.I. Lenin or perhaps a Karl Marx, proposing the insidious, anti-capitalist idea that people be allowed to "spend" their attention maintaining their social spheres in the time and place traditionally given over to the capitalist. She specifically draws attention to a fact that is obvious to anyone who has ever worked a crappy job, the desirability of a persons job is directly related to the amount of attention they are allowed to give over to their social sphere. So, while it's probably OK for the CEO to spend an hour talking to his daughter in the middle of the day, a worker on the factory floor is not allowed to engage in this social activity because she's "on the clock" or "in the workplace" and so on.

Narrative and Advertising is Valuable, Useful, Dangerous, and Necessary

A recent addition to the TED talks was a discussion of advertising by Rory Sutherland. Most humans living in the first world media sphere have grown up with a background skepticism about both advertising and the people that perpetrate the campaigns. The skepticism tells us that these messages and people are trying to manipulate us, but if anyone is entirely honest with themselves, this skepticism hasn't really stopped us from being manipulated (my mouth still waters with anticipation and desire every time I see a refreshing sprite commercial, because its more visceral than our rational skepticism.) A fact not taken into account by people skeptical of advertising is that this seedy manipulation adds value to our world. Now, if I wrote that last sentences differently I doubt I would get much of a backlash, and this just goes to prove the point. Narratives, advertising -- framing - how things are viewed -- all add value to our world because they relate and orient us to the objects and then 'us and objects' to our world in a particular way - for better or worse.

In his hilarious talk, Rory Sutherland argues that we will need to rely more on advertising in a world where we must use less natural resources, because the narrative will have to make up the value difference. Furthermore, he believes it should be combined with choice shaping behavioral economics to help us curve the individual consumption habit towards a better world. Any thoughts about this being dangerous is really obvious, but these techniques are nothing new to admen and should be seriously considered for use by green activists and their ilk.

Sutherland's talk also reminded me of a talk by Chuck Palahniuk on YouTube where he speaks about our often overlooked relationship to narratives, and the power inherent in meta-narrative creation.

Kris Kuksi: Unceasingly Byzantine

It is the unending duty of every human to sort out his relationship to, and place in, the byzantine catacombs of human history. It is up to each generation to discover what complacent part they play in the historical injustices of their world, and act appropriately. For after accepting our world contingent lives we must also accept the truth of the worlds condition. Here, in the early 21st century, we find ourselves more challenged than any generation before, with seemingly unceasing, inexhaustible, digital access to the details of our history we are constantly learning, re-learning, readjusting, and taking responsibility for the world. This is the aesthetic knowledge that is imbued in the multimedia assemblages of artist Kris Kuksi. His assemblages of mass-produced cultural and pop-cultural items into singular, amalgamated visions of humanity in metaphor, offer us a chance to view the task laid before us as humans: to try to create a coherent narrative from the fragmented, complex fields, nooks, and halls of our collected histories. His works remind us that our actions in life, our choices will ultimately determine what place in these piles of statues that we will take, if any at all.

Feed The Animals - Girl Talk

I'm late to the party here, but I just want to talk about Girl Talk's 2008 Album Feed The Animals. The copyfight issues behind the work of this sampling artist, have been bandied about by plenty of others, including in the documentary RiP! A Remix Manifesto. The aspect of sampling artistry that catches my interest is that it seems to fit my own aesthetic sense of media overload. For the last few decades of the post-modern artists have lamented the way that the information spheres constantly bombard us with unceasing message. They have depicted the media as being this omnipresent malevolent force in our lives seeking to manipulate and control us. The work of sampling artists like Girl Talk reverse the tables, here the artist takes in the unceasing message flood, remixes, reinterprets, and redirects the flows into a medium in itself. While using the media as the medium is not a new idea, I think that we have reached a point where some artists have regained control over the explosion of media and no longer feel overwhelmed.

You can download and enjoy this highly illegal art form here, on a pay what you want basis.

Tribes: Emergent and Deliberately Formed

Seth Godin and David Logan have both given talks at different TED conferences this year on the subject of Tribes. Seth Godin, author of Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, spoke about tribes that we deliberately form to accomplish change in the world. The process for their formation running something like this:

• We tell a story of change to people who want to hear it.
• We connect all the people who wanted to hear the message with others like them.
• You then lead those people towards the change in the story.
• Finally the change is accomplished and the tribe becomes institutionalized.

The part of Godin's talk that caught my attention the most was his remark that mass marketing is now dead because of the internet, and that this is what necessitates the formation of these tribes. I'm not sure that I agree with the argument, not just because when people declare things dead they don't seem to actually die, but because large portions of the consumer audience is still subjecting itself to media channels besides the internet - so, mass marketing is still alive and kicking, but certainly it's not the shiny new marketing consultation bauble it used to be.

But, his point about mass marketing being an archaic tool on the internet is certainly true. When forming these tribes, you certainly cannot aim towards the center of the bell curve, you want to be aiming instead for highly influential people with a strong passion for your message (the more otaku the better.)

David Logan, co-author of Tribal Leadership, focused more on tribes that are emergent in society, he classified them into five 'stages' defined by verbal phrase that summarizes their socialization theme.

• Stage 1: "All Life Sucks" - these tribes cut ties with other functioning tribes and band together excluding everyone. Examples include: cults, street & prison gangs.
• Stage 2: "My Life Sucks" - these tribes are formed of people with common problems and situations. Examples include: People in a DMV line, People together during power outage.
• Stage 3: "I'm Great, you're not" - these tribes are formed by people of comparable lives: professionally, academically, athletically, etc. They engage in a competitive "topper game" where each person in the group tries to out compete the other. Examples include: Stock brokers comparing returns, students comparing grades, players comparing wins in sports, etc.
• Stage 4: "We're Great" - these tribes are formed by people of common values who are working together for a mutual goal. Examples might include: businesses that give high levels of autonomy to their employees, Churches, volunteer members of non-profit organizations, etc.
• Stage 5: "Life is Great" - these are tribes that bring together large numbers of tribes in cooperation towards a mutual goal.

Logan, in his talk, urged people to become tribal leaders and push the tribes they end up in towards higher 'stages' of functionality. This would increase the inter-connectivity of the group and the influence and reach of it as well.

Neither of Godin's or Logan's explanations seem to be entirely satisfying, they both seem to be arguing that people should take a more deliberate hand in the structure of their social lives, pushing them towards organization and change seeking goals. Not an entirely bad idea in a world where people seem to be drifting further apart despite superficial telecommunications connections, but as many people commenting on TED have asked: how do you get people to move? A few people have answered with something I have already been thinking about lately, don't concern yourself with those who aren't moving, find the ones that are moving first and work with them.

TED Video - Seth Godin: On The Tribes We Lead
TED Video - David Logan: On Tribal Leadership