The Sirens’ Call

by Chris Hayes
abandoned the book towards the end, as it got too gloomy.

⭐︎

key notes:
  • from manipulating atoms to manipulating bits
  • comic books vs. cigarettes
  • attention is the resource at the core of our psyche
  • attention can be extracted at a sensory level
  • the restlessness of our minds, the craving for diversion
  • no amusement, no boredom — is boredom part of the human condition or a condition of modernity?
  • the experience of boredom is contingent — it is culturally socially and institutionally produced
  • the more you limit yourself, the more resourceful you become
  • feelings of loneliness told them when those protective bonds were in danger or deficient
  • social attention as a path to invention of language
  • existential satisfaction can be experienced only when we are recognized by those whom we ourselves recognize
  • information can reduce attentional demands of the organization only if it absorbs more information previously received by others, that is only if it listens and thinks more than it speaks
  • in conserving your attention, it captures your attention
  • if a product is good at conserving our attention and sustaining our focus, it's also good at wrenching away our attention for other purposes
  • the marginal cost of soliciting attention approaches zero, but the cost of having our attention taken rises as the value of attention as a resource rises (it costs a spammer nothing to distract us, it costs a lot to be distracted)
  • we engage in the process of ordering the world according to our folk theories and cultural stories even at the cost of seeing what's right in front of us. 
  • we create stories to make sense of a senseless world and we persist in telling these stories even as everything around us falls apart.