In The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, author Chris Hayes addresses things people in my network are experiencing and to some extent freaking out about: Why can’t I stop doom scrolling TikTok and Instagram Reels? Why can’t I read a long book any more? Or more than one book in a year? How could we have elected the attention hound who is the 47th president? Hayes says attention has become a fungible commodity in our society and people and corporations are intentionally stealing it from us, in part to monetize what we pay attention to. If readers are interested in challenges in modern society, I recommend this book.
“Attention is the substance of life,” Hayes wrote. “Every moment we are awake we are paying attention to something, whether through our affirmative choice or because something or someone has compelled it. Ultimately these instants of attention accrue into a life.” Hayes asserts things have changed, “Our dominion over our own minds has been punctured.”
Back in the day I held an overnight work meeting in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania. For entertainment, the group voted to go to nearby Atlantic City for dinner and sightseeing. We ended up walking through the Trump Casinos before they went bankrupt. I recall signs saying something to the effect, “Don’t Disturb the Players,” referring to scattered people in a sea of slot machines dropping coin after coin into the slots. Hayes discusses this phenomenon in The Sirens’ Call.
Slot machines hold our attention by grabbing it for just a little bit while we wait for the spinning to stop, and then repeating that same brief but intense process over and over. The model is simple: Each play lasts only a few seconds. Bright lights and novel stimuli compel our attention. A moment of suspense is followed by resolution. A mystery in miniature is revealed, perhaps satisfyingly, perhaps unsatifyingly, but right there to be repeated. (The Sirens’ Call by Chris Hayes).
Hayes points out it is not the gambling that keeps players at the slots. “It is the unique attentional trance the machine’s gameplay induces,” he wrote. The casino uses players’ attention to monetize their time in the trance. That most gamblers have the same motivation is an example of making attention a fungible commodity. In this scenario, the house always wins, even if Trump himself couldn’t make a go of it.
The connection Hayes makes between slot machines and mobile devices, upon which to scroll various platforms, now seems obvious. Mobile devices garner and commoditize our attention to show us advertising, thereby monetizing our time and attention the way slot machines do. We often can feel like we are not in control of our minds.
The range of the book is broad. Hayes uses the narrative of Odysseus and the Sirens from the Odyssey throughout to tell his story. Among the topics covered are Early 19th Century newspapers, The Lincoln Douglas Debates, P.T. Barnum, alienation related to attention harvesting, and the evolution of what he calls the Attention Age. He closes the book with a chapter titled, “Reclaiming Our Minds,” asserting, “The internet is getting worse and worse.” He also offers things we can do to offset this.
Chris Hayes is not your typical writer. Because he spent ten years on cable television he has been in the thick of gaining attention in the form of ratings for his show on MSNBC. In cable T.V. gaining attention is everything. As a young father, his stories resemble ours in important ways. He has an interesting story to tell. I found the book to be a page turner. I recommend picking up a copy at a local library and reading it. Here’s a link.
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