Everyone Wants Your Attention

Monday 24 October 2022, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Any replies to the organizer - thormay@yahoo.com

Venue: Cafe Brunelli, 187 Rundle St, Adelaide CBD, South Australia

Focus Questions

1. Who does want your attention? How do they go about getting it? [Think of individuals, companies, social media ...]

2. How do so-called influencers actually get away with capturing people's attention? How often does 'influence' lead to action?

3. How do you protect yourself from unwanted attention?

4. Who would you LIKE to want your attention? Why?

5. Smart phones, computers, maybe TV take up a lot of our time. None of these existed a generation ago. Did people then really have more control over directing their attention? If so, how did they actually use their time?

6. We have 24 hours in a day and ... hours in an average lifetime. Is there are right way and a wrong way to cut up this magic stuff called time? How do you go about managing it on micro and macro scales? Does you ability to direct your attention have anything to do with this time management?

7. What is the social, educational and economic cost of short attention spans? There seems to be a rising epidemic of ATHD among adults and teens (or at least comment on it by psychologists and media). Also market researchers and teachers say that clients have increasingly short attention spans. [Teaching English to 18-22 year old girls in China I used to collect all visible smartphones before and during each lesson ...] .

8. The advertising industry lives or dies by successfully capturing people's attention. This industry was worth US$590.3 billion annually in 2021. How do they actually capture attention and where do they fail?

9. All governments, whatever their type, seek to engage citizens' attention on certain issues, and to distract attention away from other issues. What are their techniques of attraction and distraction? Where do they succeed best in this game, and where do they fail most often?

10. How do you personally go about attracting and retaining the attention of other people when it is important to you? For example, what is your conversational style. Where do you see room for improvement in this area?

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Extra Reading

Johann Hari (2 Jan 2022) "Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen - Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can." The Guardian @ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/02/attention-span-focus-screens-apps-smartphones-social-media [Quote: "A small study of college students found they now only focus on any one task for 65 seconds. A different study of office workers found they only focus on average for three minutes. This isn’t happening because we all individually became weak-willed. Your focus didn’t collapse. It was stolen".]

Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz (September 16, 2022). "A law to defend human attention is an idea whose time has come". The Age @ https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/we-once-had-a-law-to-defend-human-attention-it-s-time-for-an-update-20220916-p5bijf.htm l

William Dodson (August 24, 2022) "Secrets of Your ADHD Brain - Most people are neurologically equipped to determine what’s important and get motivated to do it, even when it doesn’t interest them. Then there are the rest of us, who have attention deficit — ADHD or ADD — and the brain that goes along with it". Additude Journal - Inside the ADHD mind @ https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/

Edgar O (December 1, 2021) "How to Get Your Tweets Seen Among Twitter’s 500 million Daily Tweets". MeetEdgar website @ https://meetedgar.com/blog/201407this-is-why-nobody-sees-your-tweets-2/ [Quote: "The average Jane spends 2.5 hours a day on social media, every single day. In fact, the average person will spend over five years of their life on social media! (For comparison, you’ll spend about three-and-a-half years eating and drinking.) ... Statistics show that people spend just 3 minutes each day on Twitter! ... So, for any given Tweet, you have a teensy window of time to hit an even tinier segment of your audience."

Eric Ravenscraft (May 30, 2019) "Facebook’s Notifications Are Out of Control. Here’s How to Tame Them. - Facebook already has you hooked, but now it wants to keep you engaged with dozens of notifications each day. Here’s how to get a little peace and quiet". New York Times @ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/smarter-living/stop-facebook-notifications.html

Kristine Bolt (n.d.) "3 Guaranteed Signs God Is Trying To Get Your Attention".
https://kristinebolt.com/3-signs-god-is-trying-to-get-your-attention/ [Thor, comment: To me this looks like living proof that people can persuade themselves of anything ... but if it floats your boat, go for it :) ]

Nicholas Thompson (July 26, 2017) "Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones. Tristan Harris Wants to Rescue Them - The founder of a nonprofit aimed at stopping tech companies from “hijacking our minds” says internet users must rise up and reclaim their humanity". Wired @ https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them/

Thor May (2014) " Is the “white noise” of daily media distraction deliberate social control, or just modernity out of control? - Everyone has only 24 hours in a day. In many countries the sheer struggle to survive occupies most waking hours. In some others, any “free thinking time” is carefully manipulated by state directed activities, propaganda and censorship. A possible third model is that ruling elites and governments may prevent criticism by distracting the main population with sports, entertainment and endless trivial ‘news’." The Passionate Skeptic Website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/DiscussionTopics/MediaWhiteNoise-mu.htm

Amanda Meade (10 Oct 2022) "It’s not moral panic, it’s reality’: Todd Sampson documentary interrogates internet’s toxic influence - In Mirror Mirror, the former advertising executive argues technology is an unregulated psychological experiment that is changing our brains". The Guardian at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/10/its-not-moral-panic-its-reality-todd-sampson-documentary-interrogates-internets-toxic-influence [Quote: "In his two-part film, Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate, Sampson shows us first hand the mind-altering power of technology; a technology so intoxicating children choose the online world over the real world and a grown man falls in love with a customised chatbot. “Generally people who make the claim that it’s moral panic are people without children,” Sampson says ahead of the show airing over two nights on Channel Ten in Australia. “Because if you have kids you realise it is not moral panic, it is just reality.”]

Chris MacLeod (n.d.) "How To Think Of Things To Say When Making Conversation". SucceedSocially website @ https://www.succeedsocially.com/thinkofthingstosay [Thor, comment: This is a very competent collection of suggestions]

Daniella Alscher (March 11, 2022) "11 Advertising Techniques to Attract Audience Attention". G2 website @ https://www.g2.com/articles/advertising-techniques

Claire Beveridge, Tony Tran (June 8, 2022) "Social Media in Government: Benefits, Challenges, and How it’s Used - There are many key benefits of using social media in government, including crisis communications, campaign awareness, and more".
Hootsuite website @ https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-government/

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