Sunday, November 16, 2014

Paying Attention in an Age of Distraction: On Yves Citton's Pour Une Écologie de l'Attention



Yves Citton's Pour une Écologie de l'Attention is something of a companion volume to L’Économie de l’attention. Nouvel horizon du capitalisme? a book edited by Citton. Many of the essays in the latter cite the former. However, the different titles, and the question mark in the latter suggest a divergence around a central question. Both books work from the central provocation that we are living through a profound mutation in the nature of attention, never have we had so many distractions or devices soliciting our attention. What remains in question is first whether or not this transformation is best of all understood as a new economy of attention? Terms such as "paying," "cost," and "investment" regularly suggest themselves when it comes to discussing attention. Attention appears as a scarce resource and it is quite easy to speak of losses and gains when it comes to attention, as every moment spent reading tweets is not spent reading books. The more important question is whether or not attention can be understood as an economy of sorts, but whether we have entered a new phase of capitalism in which attention itself is productive of value. Metaphor meets mode of production.

Sunday, November 09, 2014

Ends of Man: Cynicism and Sentiment in Nightcrawler and Interstellar


OK. I am going to make this quick. I saw two films this weekend, Nightcrawler and Interstellar,  and since I am me, many people expected me to blog about them. I am way too busy for such things, but like Louis Bloom (Tiqqun reference?) pictured above, I aim to please my fans and my own craven ego, I thought that I would try a quick post wrapping up my impressions of both films.