Attention - Revision history

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‎Context

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‎Amusing Ourselves to Death

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‎Amusing Ourselves to Death

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‎Attention Networks

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 * Most advertisers or influencers talk about trying to maximize the "eyeballs" that are focused on their offerings, but since the rise of podcasts it is better to focus on the user's [[Attention]] which is what will drive their actions.
 * The same can even be said about selling ideas to venture capitalists. First is the name of the idea, then the elevator pitch and then the pitch points in a slide deck presentation. Again, get and hold the attention of the source of money; That's the same.
-* The invention of the clock enabled people to control the amount time time we attend to the current task rather the task that is currently pushing itself to our attention, like hunger for food or socialization.
+* The invention of the clock enabled people to control the amount time time we attend to the currently scheduled task rather the task that our primitive brain is currently pushing into our attention, like hunger for food or socialization.
 ==Types==

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 * Most advertisers or influencers talk about trying to maximize the "eyeballs" that are focused on their offerings, but since the rise of podcasts it is better to focus on the user's [[Attention]] which is what will drive their actions.
 * The same can even be said about selling ideas to venture capitalists. First is the name of the idea, then the elevator pitch and then the pitch points in a slide deck presentation. Again, get and hold the attention of the source of money; That's the same.
-* The invention of the clock enabled use to control the amount time time we attend to the current task rather the task that is currently pushing itself to our attention, like hunger for food or socialization.
+* The invention of the clock enabled people to control the amount time time we attend to the current task rather the task that is currently pushing itself to our attention, like hunger for food or socialization.
 ==Types==

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 * Most advertisers or influencers talk about trying to maximize the "eyeballs" that are focused on their offerings, but since the rise of podcasts it is better to focus on the user's [[Attention]] which is what will drive their actions.
 * The same can even be said about selling ideas to venture capitalists. First is the name of the idea, then the elevator pitch and then the pitch points in a slide deck presentation. Again, get and hold the attention of the source of money; That's the same.
 ==Types==

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 * Social media echo chambers and curated identities
-* Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death<ref> Neil Postman, ''Amusing Ourselves to Death''</ref> how the dominant medium of communication shapes public discourse. His central thesis: Television has transformed serious public conversation into entertainment, eroding our capacity for rational thought and civic engagement. What Postman Wanted Us to Understand
+Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death<ref> Neil Postman, ''Amusing Ourselves to Death''</ref> how the dominant medium of communication shapes public discourse. His central thesis: Television has transformed serious public conversation into entertainment, eroding our capacity for rational thought and civic engagement. What Postman Wanted Us to Understand
 * Medium shapes message: Building on Marshall McLuhan’s insight, Postman argued that the form of communication (print vs. TV) determines the depth and quality of ideas we can express.
 * Print culture fostered reason: In a print-dominated society, discourse was linear, logical, and sustained—ideal for complex thought, debate, and democracy.

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 By  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/the-battle-for-attention</ref>
 ===Amusing Ourselves to Death===
-* Aldus Huxly wrote Brave New World<ref>Aldus Huxly ''Brave New World''</ref> as a cautionary tale—a satirical, dystopian vision meant to provoke reflection on the cost of comfort, conformity, and technological control.
+* Aldus Huxly wrote Brave New World<ref>Aldus Huxly ''Brave New World''</ref> as a cautionary tale—a satirical, dystopian vision meant to provoke reflection on the cost of comfort, conformity, and technological control. Published in 1932, the novel critiques a future society where:
-Published in 1932, the novel critiques a future society where:
+Huxley wasn’t just warning against authoritarianism—he was challenging the seductive dangers of soft totalitarianism, where people are pacified not by fear, but by pleasure. Ethics must guide progress: Scientific advancement without philosophical grounding leads to spiritual decay. What Huxley Wanted Us to Learn
 * Freedom without discomfort is hollow: In the World State, people are free from pain, but also free from depth, struggle, and authenticity.
 * Technology can dehumanize: When used to control rather than empower, it erodes agency and moral choice.
 * Conformity kills creativity: Standardized roles and engineered desires leave no room for dissent or genuine emotion.
-Ethics must guide progress: Scientific advancement without philosophical grounding leads to spiritual decay.
+Huxley wanted readers to ask: “What are we sacrificing for convenience, and who decides what counts as happiness?” His vision resonates in a world of:
 * Algorithmic nudging and dopamine loops
 * Biotech and reproductive engineering
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 * Social media echo chambers and curated identities
-He wanted readers to ask: “What are we sacrificing for convenience, and who decides what counts as happiness?”
+* Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death<ref> Neil Postman, ''Amusing Ourselves to Death''</ref> how the dominant medium of communication shapes public discourse. His central thesis: Television has transformed serious public conversation into entertainment, eroding our capacity for rational thought and civic engagement. What Postman Wanted Us to Understand
 * Medium shapes message: Building on Marshall McLuhan’s insight, Postman argued that the form of communication (print vs. TV) determines the depth and quality of ideas we can express.
 * Print culture fostered reason: In a print-dominated society, discourse was linear, logical, and sustained—ideal for complex thought, debate, and democracy.

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 The old metrics used in advertising were based on an opportunity to see. “An ‘impression’ is just a measure that the ad was served,” Leong said. But recent data revealed that even most supposedly “viewable” ads weren’t being viewed. “Consumers’ span of attention is now believed to be less than eight seconds,” Raja Rajamannar, the chief marketing officer of Mastercard, a Dentsu client, told me. “That is less than the attention span of a goldfish.”<ref>Nathan Heller, ''The Battle for Attention - How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?'' The New Yorker (2024-04-29)
 By  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/the-battle-for-attention</ref>
 ==Solutions==

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 ===Attention Networks===
 * The concept that makes [[Artificial Intelligence]] most useful is Attention Networks, a standard deep-learning technique that lets an AI focus on specific parts of its input data. This tech underpins language models like GPT-3, where it directs the neural networks to relevant words in a sentence.<ref> Will Douglas Heaven, ''Deepmind's Big Science Experiment'' Technology Review (2022-03) Vol 125 no 2 p. 31 ff.</ref>
-* The idea behind attention in [[Artificial Intelligence]] is from the article "Attention Is All You Need," that described the best performing models that connect the encoder and decoder through an attention mechanism. It proposes a new simple network architecture, the Transformer, based solely on attention mechanisms, dispensing with recurrence and convolutions entirely.<ref>Ashish Vaswani, ''Attention Is All You Need'' (2017-06-22) https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762</ref>
+* The idea behind attention in [[Artificial Intelligence]] is from the article "Attention Is All You Need," that described the best performing models that connect the encoder and decoder through an attention mechanism. It proposes a new simple network architecture, the [[Transformer]], based solely on attention mechanisms, dispensing with recurrence and convolutions entirely.<ref>Ashish Vaswani, ''Attention Is All You Need'' (2017-06-22) https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762</ref>
 ===Pitch Points===

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 These are the stages of seeking attention and their limitations:
 # Store-front placards - the customer had to be passing the front of the store
-# Heralds in the street - the customer had to be in the streets
+# Outrageous behavior or Heralds in the street - the customer had to be in the streets
 # Printing - Headlines and visual images promising miracle cures or a better life
 # Broadcasting - consumers had to be listening to the media where the ad was placed - still in use
 # Internet Searching - Google ads targeted to consumer's taste - dominated until the rise of
 # Social Media - ads are one way, but interesting stories might be more effective
 ===Political===

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 ===Commercial===
-The Sellers of ideas and good have been struggling to get the attention of those that can impact their lives so long as there have been large aggregations of people, at least for the past 10,000 years.
+The Sellers of ideas and good have been struggling to get the attention of those that can impact their lives so long as there have been large aggregations of people, at least for the past 5,000 years.
 Google and Facebook make essentially all of their revenue from advertising that seeks to grab the user's attention. The result is to dumb down the "click-bait" to the point of inanity.
 ===Political===