Abstract
The narrative begins with human interaction and information exchange. Human interaction has moved from face to face to wired communication and, more recently, to wireless and asynchronous connection in an ever-expanding network of friends. Platforms for this communication are now commercialized because connections are measured in terms of time. This chapter outlines the six distinctive features of information itself that standardize, or commoditize, these connections in terms of time. Defining attention as cognitive bandwidth hours, or uninterrupted hours of mental effort, time is a building block for attention.
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Notes
- 1.
Content comprises social communication, factual information exchange, media content and entertainment or Center for International Media Ethics (CIME). Economic literature frequently uses the term information to refer to the entire realm of CIME.
- 2.
On the popular comedy show, Key and Peele, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele eloquently portray the misunderstanding generated by the perceived undertones of their text messages. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naleynXS7yo
- 3.
Violence and acrimony that has been recently enveloping the nation could be attributed to generally disenchanted individuals aligning with groups in search of identity and legitimacy. They then acquire the most extreme views of that group.
- 4.
Logic’s hit single 1-800-273-8255 was third on the Billboard Hot 100 list in 2017. The song’s name is the phone number of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. Calls to that number increased significantly, following the song’s release as well as after the night of the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. Did the song bring awareness of suicidal tendencies among teens or did it simply provide an outlet for help?
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Bhatt, S. (2019). Time: The Measure of Connectivity. In: The Attention Deficit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21848-5_2
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