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Attention

Mary Oliver, one of my favourite poets, once said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion” (Oliver, 2016). There is a close, if not wholly agreed upon, association between attention and consciousness (e.g. see Blackmore & Troscianko, 2024); some even say that attention is consciousness.

 

However, amidst attention overload in our “attention economy,” a term coined by Herbert A. Simon (Berkeley Economic Review, 2020, para. 3), when we discuss the singular importance of attention in our human experience, there is an elephant in the room: our relationship with (and sometimes addiction to) our technological devices. 


Reflect
Pay attention to your attention.

Task:

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For one hour or one day, observe (without judgment) your relationship to technology. Do this during a regular day, while going about your usual activities. Keep a tally chart for every time you check or think about your device(s). This could be to check a notification, open an email, read a text message, scroll on social media, or even think about a response, a post, or some other matter dictated by technology.

 

After the hour/day is done, count the ticks on your tally chart, and consider this: 

  • How many times does your attention wander towards a technology? 

  • Are the numbers on the tally chart in line with your expectations and intentions around the use of technology? (We might rephrase this as “Are you using it, or is it using you?”)

Wet Autumn Leaves
Pine Cone

View

In this TED Talk video, Tristan Harris discusses how user attention and behaviour are manipulated by tech companies through design strategies that exploit human psychology and prioritize holding our attention above the well-being of users. He highlights the urgent need for ethical standards in technology to protect users from such practices.

 

Think

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  • What strategies do tech companies use to get and hold our attention?

  • What are the “radical changes” we can make to fix our relationship with technology and the commandeering of our attention?

Read

We began with some of Mary Oliver’s wisdom. Let's end with her poem, “Summer Day”:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 

(p. 94)

Mushroom
Field Sunset

Read the last two lines of Oliver's poem again.

 

So, what is it? 

 

For more about Mary Oliver and Attention (through the lens of philosophy and poetry), watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/live/dY_E9rsQXy0?feature=shared

References

 

Recommended for Further Reading

  • Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin Press. 

  • Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Grand Central Publishing. 

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