From Tim Wu, author of the award-winning "The Master Switch" and who
coined the phrase "net neutrality"--a revelatory look at the rise of
"attention harvesting," and its transformative effect on our society and
our selves.
Attention merchant: an industrial-scale harvester of human attention. A
firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to
advertisers.
In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of
advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media,
commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last
century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the
"attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor
of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of
recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and
expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the
pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to TV's golden age to our
present age of radically individualized choices, the business model of
"attention merchants" has always been the same. He describes the revolts
that have risen against these relentless attempts to influence our
consumption, from the remote control to FDA regulations to Apple's
ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants grow
ever-new heads, and their means of harvesting our attention have given
rise to the defining industries of our time, changing our
nature--cognitive, social, and otherwise--in ways unimaginable even a
generation ago.
"From the Hardcover edition."
