two articles on Attention, missing something, but what is attention?

Howard Rheingold's recent article on focusing attention in class and the book review he cites are both of interest, but both seem to miss that dealing with attention is as much about wanting it as how to focus our own. 

Speaking of focussing it, if you have the patience, here is my long chapter on what attention is, (if I haven't given it to you previously).

Topic for April 27, 2009

For the next class, I have several suggested readings. First my article "The Mentality of Homo interneticus". Second, an article in the NY Times Magazine by Clive Thompson :"I'm So Totally Digitally Close to You", and third and fourth two short pieces from my blog on the "Net as Superself" and "Are We losing the Narrative Self?" .

News about the class

Hi all. I have reconsidered the subject for the next session, Monday April 20th. The topics will be the Intellectual Property (especially copyright and copying) debate and its effects on newspapers and books in particular. How will the delivery of news  change? Can newspapers survive? If so how? I apologize in advance for any disappointments about not covering the topics originally planned, but I think this will make for a more interesting discussion.  

Moral values affected by media such as Twitter?

Some serious brain researchers are worried  (see this) that moral values will be hurt by the rapid changes of attention suggested by Facebook and Twitter. I cvansee reasons to think otherwise, but they may be right. 

A Good use of the Internet

This one-minute video on the history of the Planet Earth puts everything in a valuable perspective.

The Twitchhiker: Using online attention to in the material world

A new blog on language in the NY Times describes someone using Twittering to travel half way around the world, with no other sources of aid, supposedly. 

Multiply this many fold, and it indicates how an economy not involving money , but based strictly on attention, might work.

A few interesting articles about the Internet and ordinary politics

It appears only one issue of this journal , Politics and Technology Review, was published, in March, 2008, but the articles are all somewhat interesting and relatively short. It came out of Washington DC, so the prime focus is on how to use the Internet to support and/or draft candidates. 

Article on Internet governance

This op-ed in today's NY times by one of the founders of the Internet goes along with the Benkler video and in a way segues in to next week's discussion.

Class presentation for last Monday, April 6

Some asked me to post the presentation, including the parts I didn't get to. 

A version  that, as in class, you can click through and see many of the “slides” change click by click, or go here:

http://tinyurl.com/chqosu

A "pdf" (Acrobat) version of the presentation in which each slide appears only once. The second slide therefore looks garbled, so if you want to review it, please use the other version.  Or go here:

http://tinyurl.com/d9qakr

In both versions the video of me explaining how you pay attention doesn't run. If you want to see this, please view it on YouTube.

Benkler video

Had time permitted I would have shown this video in class yesterday. (If you have a choice of browsers, I would use firefox.) 

Incidentally, I am still trying to find a way to post the presentation I was using yesterday, so that the parts I didn't get to would be there for you to preuse. 

Google and Libraries: The controversy

Interesting news about the controversy between Google and others about the pending settlement re:copyrighted books online just appeared. Some (admittedly biased) background can be found here. It is relevant to the discussion on the Attention Economy, planned for Monday.