Onlife Attention: Attention in the Digital Age

Abstract

The Onlife Manifesto rightfully points to the emergence of new forms of subjectivity in the digital age and how ICT calls for the re-distribution of tasks and responsibilities between humans and their technologies. However, attention is still conceived in the Manifesto in modernist terms, as a problem of distraction. Within the terminology of attention economy, the Manifesto is critical about the abuse of traditional forms of attention, but does not make the next step to develop an alternative. In this chapter, I elaborate on the notion of attention and think of its new form in the digital age. A genealogy of the notion shows how attention reflects the dominant technologies of a period. In the age of the printed book, attention meant focusing on one activity at a time, and the background had to be silent and unnoticeable. In the age of radio and television, when stations and channels were switched with a single button, attention was still focused on a single item but for shorter periods of time. Today, in the age of multi-processor computers and cell phones, attention is distributed among tasks. In its distributed form, attention can provide a subversive answer to the attention economy that requires our undivided attention.