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The fundamental assumptions in your post disturb me. You are essentially mitigating the severity of the problem the article describes by saying that, really, advertis[ers|ments] are not _totally_ effective in stealing all of our attention. We can probably tune it out, sometimes. Usually we can mostly tune it out. For now. This is such a pernicious idea. I suppose it can occur because this whole advertising thing has been one giant boiling the frog endeavor -- the fact that in some places you cannot engage in public life without turning over your attention, and all the statistical learning that occurs with it, to some entity over which you have no control. Well, other than the trivial "just stay in your house" control, which I don't feel to be control in any meaningful way. It's interesting that the solution proposed to this is to assert property rights over something that, like clean air, people will probably have an intrinsic reaction to framing as property. In other words, a tragedy of the commons defense against something that is, in some ways, the opposite of the commons: the right to engage in civic behavior and still be gatekeeper of your own attention. Although maybe you could say it's the attentional commons, as if we all shared the same attentional pasture. Attention is one of those things where it seems to me the sci-fi future is closer than we imagine -- where you walk along a street, and, based on who some company things you are, helpful product info gets beamed into your brain. It's already that way with audio, which, unlike visual stimuli, you can't even turn away from or tune out. |