The Rationalization of the Attention Market | Hacker News Reader

The Rationalization of the Attention Market

blogs.harvard.edu

80 pointsmschrage15 comments

> So it is possible to resist, but we are not all Jimmy Wales. The pressure to submit is overwhelming. On the level of the employee, there is the specter of unemployment. To willfully reject the logic of the market is to be rightfully terminated. But the pressure to conform to its demands exists at every level. The executive, though better paid, is essentially in the same position as the janitor. To resist is to go. Even the founder, the inventor, the owner, the celebrity is precariously positioned. While they might be spared termination at the hands of management, in the long run, they too end up in the same place. In 1938, Bill Paley, the chief executive of CBS, presciently stated that “too often the machine runs away with itself” (Friendly 168). To obstruct the machine is to be crushed by it. To refuse to go along is to be replaced. Everyone and everything is fungible.

> When it comes meaning in media, we are confronted with an unpalatable choice. Either stable meaning imposed through deliberative control by the few (as tyranny) or the autonomous, impersonal and invisible hand of the attention market, which, in the end, results in the “liquidation of meaning” (Baudrillard 84). Any point in between is an unstable equilibrium. And one can at least negotiate with a tyrant.

A slightly depressing ending to arrive at but an amazing read

“Any point in between is an unstable equilibrium.”

That is the conundrum defining my aldulthood (roughly the “internet era”); and it creates confusion and despair. It’s especially painful because I’d expected hope and enlightenment.

The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false dichotomy though.

Why is it that the invisible hand must govern desperate people? Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no?

I don’t think we can. We might be able to replace market economies with something better, but any free market’s optimisation strategy requires people to make rational self-interested decisions.

Obviously we’re not great at the rational part, but my limited understanding is that we have not already successfully replaced free markets because our economic science knowledge is still nowhere near good enough at predicting the desires of nation-sized populations.

> Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no?

That requires the provision of safety and security outside of market mechanisms. This is where "basic income" (security against destitution, but still using the market) and "universal healthcare" (variety of not-quite-market options) are coming from.

It also requires some kind of firewalling of political and psychological security against market mechanisms, otherwise the invisible hand will reach back in to exploit people's unsafety.

It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion as well - especially if what you care about is countering the negatives of the "attention market". Traditional societies are actually very good at this, thanks to their highly-refined social structures which mesh well with human social ("tribe") instincts. Modern-day societies that try to be "market-based" to a rather extreme extent are a lot more atomized. You can deal with that if you're lucky enough to have relatively-high income or wealth, but it's essentially a crappy, inefficient band-aid-- and the people in "relative poverty" are still SOL.

> It's not just safety and security that must be provided, but social inclusion as well

Isn't it curious that we need to provide this as external source of safety? I'm not disagreeing, I also think so, but it's still surprising.

If we think about that "the machine" is objective, and that it can look into our hearts, that it wants to reach as many of us as possible, and wants to convince us to do its bidding by positive feedback loops, then why doesn't provide safety and security as a default?

Makes me wonder if our feedback loop is somehow "buggy" and that the feedback loop and our needs are not really correlating that much.

> The underlying assumption to reach this conclusion is basically a false dichotomy though.

It's a dichotomy, sure. The support for your contention that it is a false one is... where?

> Could we not keep the optimizing aspects of market economies even in a world where people are safe enough to say no?

That's kind of the idea of the balance sought in principle by the modern mixed economy; the problem is (well, a problem is) that the people who are most successful in that economy (and therefore wield disproportionate power) keep trying to drag it back to being capitalism because they benefit by minimizing the mitigating measures, even without us having achieved “a world where people are safe enough to start no.” Maybe that middle ground exists, but our experience shows that any middle ground is unstable.

I don’t think the burden of proof against dichotomies should be on me. But as a counter point consider the massive amount of economic value produced in commons based peer-production a means of production that seems to flourish despite the world insistence on fitting everything into the market economy.

Regarding the feedback from capital owners I believe a Geoliberal approach to capitalism could counter that.

Really love this paragraph, perfectly puts to words what I've long been thinking about

Not sure I understand. It's pretty clear to me why Jimmy doesn't submit - it would slowly deteriorate the Wikipedia project. He's favoring long term benefits over short term benefits (for the project).

I don't think it is depressing at all. On the contrary. I wouldn't not make the same choice as the author hinted at. I would additionally suggest that it is the wrong one.

Still a good article and analysis about the forces shaping our perception of the importance (or non-importance) of particular topics.

I wouldn't hold it against journalists/writers to see it the way the author does considering it probably resonates with them given their position. But that doesn't have to be the end of history.

I can rarely make heads or tails of the media theorists like McLuhan, Foucault, Baudrillard but this essay is both lucid and concrete. Well done to the author.

The Karl Marx quote about the Iliad and the printing press is interesting. I’m re-reading the Iliad at the moment, and I’ve thought about how different it must be in the original Greek, or recited orally. It’s still an incredible work, printed or not.

I guess it’s a bit like Marx wondering if “The Godfather” can exist in a world of 15 second vertical videos.

But it’s also an old question.

Socrates: Writing will destroy society.

Plato: [scribbles]

Socrates: Plato, what are you doing?

God, so much huffing and puffing. Such a wind bag. None of this guy’s stuff is pointing in the right direction.

He’s looking at twentieth century struggles, but the artifice that he grapples with in long form text is not what the drivers of change were.

What he points to is a microvave oven boiling water, in a kitchen with a grease fire. The technologies of socialization are like cotton candy, when stood next to the architecture of behaviors that insulate socialites and enable socialization at all.

But then again, I suppose he gets to show off all the books he’s read, and broadcast nerd signals about how much navel gazing he does. That’s what blogs are about, right?

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