[p2p-research] on the myth of attention scarcity

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Brian,

there are several issues,

two are important to me,

the first is that you assume a static human mind,

but this is absolutely not the case,

when I taught my students about internet search, what takes me about 2
minutes would take my students more than an hour, even as they thought they
were internet savvy .. this has nothing to do with smartness per se, but
with skill, and skills can be taught

stowe is right, just as our tribal forefathers had to distill a huge amount
of natural signs, and they were so much more sensitive to this than us, so
we have with virtual signs ..

of course, I'm not saying there are no issues, but you do a huge disservice
to people by painting them as mere victims,

have you not heard or experienced in previous times, teenage girls who were
addicted to the phone, scholars who can't stop reading books, but would this
really lead you to the conclusion that the telephone or books are bad,
rather than just think this is an issue of the proper place of various media
in our lives, and of seeking balance between them?

just as with the invention of writing, then printing, and now the digital,
we are faced with a challenge, positives AND negatives, progress AND
regress, not one OR the other

the second is whether the pathologies you describe are the result of
internet, or of a host of reasons ... have you ever heard of capitalist
competition, on the pressure to produce ever more?

so this is a form of vulgar technological determinism (nothing personal,
just stating a analytical category here), when stating that the internet, or
more information, is the sole perpetrator

so, yes, the ability to create collective intelligence is a social progress,
and micromedia are better than corporate controlled mass media, and it
presents huge opportunities for self-organising and facing sustainability
challenges and solutions, but along with opportunities, come challenges,
difficulties, and new problems,

as mcluhan already showed, every technological advance brings new
affordances to us as a species, but 'handicaps' us as individuals,

the problem is not technology and tools, the human has been a tool-making
animal from the very beginning and language is one of our tools (and perhaps
not unllike the logic you propose, john zerzan yearns for for a return to
the human condition 'before language')

the problem is how techhnology and tools are embedded in social systems, who
directs their development, how individuals and societies adapt,

yes, we can reject particular technologies, for example GMO or nuclear
energy for their deleterious effect, and it is legitimate for you to reject
digital technologies (which you seem to do only theoretically, since you
seem an avid user of the technologies you are decrying), and I admire
hermits, amish and others, but it is not a solution for all,

and as long as social conflict endures, it would be unwise for social change
agents and the mass of the people, to renounce autonomous media, acquiesce
corporate controlled mass media as the sole reality that is acceptable,

digital media are a weapon for social change, the 'enemy' uses it and used
it 15 years before we could create our own, and it would be unwise to let
tools of bottom-up and egalitarian organisation lay fallow, just because of
a fear of complexity and a fear to learn new skills

I don't mind that you have a different vision of this, but of course, when
you approvingly quoted a proposal to abolish our civil rights for
communication, that is an entirely different matter, because I realize that
people who choose this path are positioning themselves as enemies of the
digital commons, instead of seeking commonality between commoners across the
board

I think this, rather than the technology itself, is the real danger for our
movement,

what is the point of your list at the end?

that you think some people think that computing will "solve all our
problems", that computing is directly causing these pathologies? I think
none of these two statements is valid,

the only truth is that some people will develop these symptoms, for a
variety of complex reasons, mostly due to personal dispositions, neurotic
family structures, and a particular social orders which may favour them ..
they occured way before the internet, and will occur way after the emergence
of the internet

to suggest that they occur as the result of the internet, which therefore is
a bad thing, is a huge simplification,

I'm with you on sustainability, but indeed, we have a huge divergence on the
social benefits of peer to peer communication,

Michel

Michel



On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Brian Davey <briadavey at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Once again I wish I had more time because I find myself in fundamental
> philosophical disagreement with you Michel.
>
> Once again I find myself completely at odds with your assumptions and
> the complete absence of any reference to the mental health dimensions
> of what you are publicising.
>
> "The framing of the argument includes the unspoken premise that once
> upon a  time in some hypothetical past attention wasn’t scarce, we
> didn’t suffer from too much information, and we had all the time in
> the world to reason about the world, our place in it, and therefore to
> make wise and grounded decisions."
>
> There are two issues here - the amount of information that "we"
> (humanity) had then and that we have now. That is issue number one.
> Issue number two is about time.
>
> You want to process more information then you need to do it more
> intensively and you need more time. The more  time you take the
> greater the complexity of the picture of the world you build up and
> the greater the complexity of the responses.
>
> The greater the complexity of the responses to be managed in a given
> amount of time then the greater the time pressure....
>
> The pace of life speeds up....it speeds up because electronics makes
> possible the processing of huge quantities of data, because transport
> technologies move people around faster, because production processes
> can occur faster.
>
> Fossil fuels and the technologies that they make possible, including
> data processing ones, are aphetamines to the pace of social and
> economic life.
>
> This temporal dimension of modern technologies rarely gets considered
> - or how destructive it is and the general assumption is that more and
> faster is better.
>
> At some point however the speed becomes incompatible with the body and
> mental rhythms on which we are based.
>
> Hyped by (toxic) fossil fuels we start to find that society has become
> manic.
>
> More and more information can only be processed and used by carrying
> society into a kind of social and economic and cultural mania.
>
> As far as I can see, you appear to be unaware of the dangers of this
> dimension and publicise this process as if it was some kind of
> progress, when it is not progress at all - it is a society going out
> of balance with profound health effects...if is
>
> SOCIAL INSANITY
>
> Here's the other way of looking at it:
>
> http://www.bgmi.us/web/bdavey/Pathologies.htm
>
> The fact that I do not have enough time to engage is part of the
> problem that I am pointing to.
>
> Further to that the idea that more and more information can ever
> provide us with all the information we need is itself an untenable
> idea. There are many reasons for this - one of them being we do not
> only lack information because there is a lack of processing and
> storage capacity but also because of taboos, censorship, secrets,
> errors, delusions and so on...
>
> There was a book published recently called "The Virtues of Ignorance.
> Complexity, Sustainability and the Limits of Knowledge." It is a quote
> from it that I heartily endorse as consistent with my own world view:
>
> " Ignorance does not mean the rejection of all knowledge. Rather, it
> entails an acknowledgement of how much we do not know, coupled with an
> awareness that anything we claim to know..... we know only partially
> and tentatively and this is always subject to revision. (This does not
> imply, it is worth pointing out, that an ignorance based worldview,
> and its corresponding ethic, must go as far as some post-modernist
> approaches in denying the possibility of any knowledge). We need to
> approach knowledge, and action that leads from knowledge, with
> humility because we are fallible... we can hold better and worse
> knowledge but never any complete, perfect, or final knowledge. And,
> whatever we know it is always from a specific, partial perspective - a
> standpoint that fundamentally shapes our way of knowing as well is the
> content of our knowledge."  from Anna L Peterson in  "The Virtues of
> Ignorance. Complexity, Sustainability and the Limits of Knowledge"
> edited by Bill Vitek and Wes Jackson.
>
>
> For my own clarification last year I drew up this list, partly based
> on the taxonomies in the Vitek and Jackson book, but expanded a little.
>
> No matter how powerful the computing, some of these problems will
> never be resolved:
>
> Known unknowns - things/situations that you know you don't know
>
> Unknown unknowns - things/situations that you don't know you don't know
>
> Taboos - things/situations that your peer group/the law/the culture
> think you should not try to get to know
>
> Errors - things that you think you know which are wrong/are not the case.
>
> Delusions - errors in which you (and perhaps your group) have an
> emotional investment which are thus difficult to shift
>
> Paranoias - hypotheses about the nature of unknowns that impute
> motives by others that are to be feared.
>
> Denials - things which are too painful to know so you ignore
> information that confirms them
>
> Unknown knowns - things that you know but are unaware of knowing
>
> Disorientation - unknowing in a (changed/changing or new) field of
> interrelationships or interconnections - often when it is in movement
> from one stable state to a new stable state.
>
> Madness - disorientation plus anger and/or distress
>
> Informational assymetry - unknowns for some people that are known to
> others (vested interests blocking information flow)
>
> Costly information - situations where getting to know costs so much
> that partial or innaccurate knowing or even ignorance may be chosen
> instead
>
> Deception - hiding knowns from others or fostering errors or delusions.
>
> Perspective - partial knowns perceived one sidedly, from a particular
> viewpoint
>
> End of list
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 7:59 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > excerpted from stowe boyd at
> >
> http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/764818419/the-false-question-of-attention-economics
> >
> >
> > This thread of Western philosophical discourse — attention scarcity,
> future
> > shock, information overload — has become the conventional wisdom. It
> seems
> > to be based on unassailable and unshakable logic. But what is that logic?
> >
> > The framing of the argument includes the unspoken premise that once upon
> a
> > time in some hypothetical past attention wasn’t scarce, we didn’t suffer
> > from too much information, and we had all the time in the world to reason
> > about the world, our place in it, and therefore to make wise and grounded
> > decisions.
> >
> > But my reading of human history suggests the opposite. In the
> pre-industrial
> > world, business people and governments still suffered from incomplete
> > information, and the pace of life always seemed faster than what had gone
> on
> > in earlier times. At every point in human history there have been
> > philosophers claiming that the current civilization has fallen from an
> > earlier halcyon state, that the ways of the ancients had been lost, and
> > modern innovations and practices threatened to destroy all that was good
> in
> > society and culture.
> >
> > So, this is merely the most recent spin on an ancient theme, as the
> Diderot
> > quote indicates.
> >
> > Imagine for a moment that it is true — there was an idyllic time back in
> the
> > Garden of Eden — when we knew all that was necessary to know, and we had
> all
> > the time in the world to make decisions. Maybe. I am betting it is a
> shadow
> > of our psychology, the same sort of magical thought that believes in
> > guardian angels and reincarnation. Just a slightly more intellectual
> > superstition.
> >
> > Another thread of this argument is that human beings don’t have the
> capacity
> > to winnow out the information we need given the torrent of information
> > streaming past, which is in a sense Diderot’s conjecture. But we really
> > don’t know what we are capable of, honestly.
> >
> > The human mind is exceptionally plastic, especially when young people are
> > exposed to media and symbolic information systems at an early age. This
> is
> > why those that take up the study of music, or programming, or karate at a
> > young age, and study for 10,000 hours gain mastery of these skills, which
> > can be accomplished before reaching 20 years of age. And even older
> people
> > can have significant improvements in cognitive skills — like juggling or
> > flight simulation games — with relative small exposure.
> >
> > I suggest we just haven’t experimented enough with ways to render
> > information in more usable ways, and once we start to do so, it will like
> > take 10 years (the 10,000 hour rule again) before anyone demonstrates
> real
> > mastery of the techniques involved.
> >
> > These are generational time scales, people. And note: the only ones that
> > will benefit in the next ten years will be those that expend the time
> needed
> > to stretch the cognition we have, now, into the configuration needed to
> > extract more from the increasingly real-time web.
> >
> > The most difficult argument to make is the following:
> >
> > We have always been confronted with a world — both natural and human-made
> —
> > that offers an infinite amount of information.
> > We have devised cultural tools — like written language, mathematics, and
> the
> > scientific method — to help understand the world in richer ways, over and
> > above our emotional and inbuilt cognitive capabilities.
> > We are heading into a post-industrial world where information systems and
> > the social matrix of the web have become the most important human
> artifact,
> > one that is repurposing everything that has come before.
> > We will need to construct new and more complex cultural tools — things
> like
> > augmented reality, massively parallel social tools, and ubiquitous mobile
> > connected devices — and new societal norms and structures to assist us in
> > using them effectively.
> > Many commentators — including Armano and Peterson — allude to the now
> > generally accepted notion that we will have to leverage social systems
> > (relying on social tools) to accomplish some part of the heavy lifting in
> > whatever new schemes we develop for understanding this new world. But it
> has
> > only been 10 years since we’ve been talking about social tools, and less
> > than five that we had anything like real-time streaming applications or
> > tools involving millions of users. It’s early days.
> >
> > I think that the rise of the social web, just like writing, the printing
> > press, and the invention of money, is not really about the the end of
> what
> > came before, but instead is the starting point for what comes next:
> richer
> > and more complex societies. These technologies are a bridge we use to
> cross
> > over into something new, not a wrecking ball tearing down the old.
> >
> > In the final analysis, I am saying there is no ‘answer’ to those that say
> we
> > are overloaded, that we are being driven mad by or enslaved to the tools
> we
> > are experimenting with, or that there is some attention calculus that
> trumps
> > all other value systems.
> >
> > I suggest we just haven’t experimented enough with ways to render
> > information in more usable ways, and once we start to do so, it will like
> > take 10 years (the 10,000 hour rule again) before anyone demonstrates
> real
> > mastery of the techniques involved.
> >
> > Instead, I suggest we continue experimenting, cooking up new ways to
> > represent and experience the flow of information, our friends’ thoughts,
> > recommendations, and whims, and the mess that is boiling in the huge
> > cauldron we call the web.
> >
> > There is no “answer” since they are asking a false question, one that
> hides
> > preconceived premises and biases. Starting out with the assumption that
> we
> > have moved past our abilities to cope with the stream of information, and
> > therefore something has to give, is a bias.
> >
> > In part, this arises from the desire of economists like Simon to find
> what
> > is scarce, and ascribe a value to it. Or to media and PR types, who want
> to
> > control discourse, and fill it with their ‘messages’ and influence social
> > opinion or buying behavior.
> >
> > But from a cognitive and anthropological viewpoint, these concerns are
> > something like Socrate’s argument that learning to read and write would
> > debase the cognition of those that had become literate. In his era the
> > ability to remember thousands of verses of poetry was the baseline for
> being
> > enculturated, and he believed that something fundamental would be lost if
> we
> > were to rely on books instead of our memories. He believed that writing
> was
> > the fall from a better time, a lesser way to think and understand the
> world.
> >
> > I think that the rise of the social web, just like writing, the printing
> > press, and the invention of money, is not really about the the end of
> what
> > came before, but instead is the starting point for what comes next:
> richer
> > and more complex societies. These technologies are a bridge we use to
> cross
> > over into something new, not a wrecking ball tearing down the old.
> >
> > There is no golden past that we have fallen from, and it is unlikely that
> we
> > are going to hit finite human limits that will stop us from a larger and
> > deeper understanding of the world in the decades ahead, because we are
> > constantly extending culture to help reformulate how we perceive the
> world
> > and our place in it.
> >
> > --
> > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
> >
> > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >
> > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
> >
> > Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>



-- 
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