The intensive commodification of human attention represents a major new economic, social, and technological development. While our screen-based lives present powerful opportunities for community formation, novel modes of access to information, and unprecedented means by which to achieve emancipatory change, it is also the case that platform capitalism increasingly fracks our minds and eyes for the vaporous money-value of our most precious human faculty — our capacity to attend. In this lecture and discussion, D. Graham Burnett will discuss the history of the “attention economy,” and sketch its implications for teaching and learning in the twenty-first century. In what way can collective forms of “Attention Activism” push back against pernicious forms of financialized exploitation of our time, thought, and sensory lives? How can the equitable defense of our attentional capacities and resources be framed as a core matter of epistemic justice?
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