[p2p-research] on the myth of attention scarcity

[Michel Bauwens]

yes, I had read the email, not the full link, and indeed, I agree, many
differences arise this way ..

but overall I would think the paradox is that more people than ever are now
able to take on multi-perspectives, though of course, not all, and there is
also a hardening taking place in times of social stress,


Michel

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Brian Davey <briadavey at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Here is something from the email that you just sent
>
> "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?"
>
> Michel, in the email that I sent there was a link to a web essay that
> I had written on time pathology. This web essay makes perfectly clear
> that I have a major place in my thinking for capitalist competition
> and "a host of other reasons"
>
> Perhaps you did not have the time to read it? Perhaps you shot back a
> reply without devoting attention to my full viewpoint.
>
> If so I think this makes my point rather well.
>
> Let me hasten to add I don't blame you for this. This is the form of
> most disagreements. People "impatient" with each other - without the
> time to clarify differences.
>
> How may times do disagreements arise from different viewpoints - you
> look over a valley from north to south and I, on the other side, from
> south to north, and then quarrel about what is the correct statement
> of what is in the valley
>
> A major reason for this quarrel would then be, not only the different
> viewpoints, but the sheer lack of time to settle and work through the
> differences.
>
> You have clearly made no effort to actually try to understand my view
> by reading the link. But then it would be unrealistic and perhaps
> unreasonable of me to insist that you did. You might indeed resent me
> for demanding that you did - especially in an era in which I can cut
> and pasted several days worth of reading and study in a second. You
> might interpret a demand from me that you read and interpret my full
> ideas as attention seeking and get impatient with me for demanding you
> devote too much of your time to my ideas....
>
> Most of us do not have adequate time to fully investigate the ideas of
> other people and I think that many problems, perhaps most, would be
> resolved if we had infinite time to work through differences.
>
> We do not have infinite time however - and there is the problem....we
> have limited time so we "get impatient with each other"
>
> I'm afraid I do not have time to resolve this difference either.
>
> Brian
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Michel Bauwens
> <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > 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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