ARTS 2090 Week 6

Week 6

The Commons: Collection and (re)Distribution/Assembling Attention

       In this digital era people are bombarded by information. Information overload is a common phase to describe the Internet. Everything seems to be on the internet, for example such as music, movie, book, work, and friend. The Internet has plenty of resources, but what does it lack? In one of the reading this week it talks about the Internet lacks "attention" and uses "attention" as the hard currency of the Internet. This is pretty much true. Why do people use social media? Why do people keep on looking down at their mobile phones while they are walking? Human for some reason, needed to be connected with others in order to fulfill the meaning of life. The Internet served as a medium for people to connect and share joy with each other. The invention of WWW and social media helped to overcome long-distance problem. Each individuals has his or her own attention in specific areas such as sport, entertainment, and politics. Attention really depends on personal interests, however, attention is also a form of social conformity. For example, social conformity helped to spread the ASL(Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) ice bucket challenge, people did the challenges because their friends and celebrities did it. This chronological disease ASL is probably known by everyone who is on social media platforms. The ice bucket challenge successfully gained attention worldwide. This "attention" grabbing social movement helped the ALS association to reach over US$90 million charity compared to last year when they only received less than US$5 million over the same period of time. This example shows the relationship between social conformity and attention. There were many other social movements that went viral as well (Harlem Shake, Gangnam Style, and Kony 2012) These attention grabbing events all started with either a single action, or a video. Once it ignited a glimmer of fire, it can possibly cause a bush fire. It is not surprising that the power of "attention" is exploited by big corporations and governments.