Archives


Atom Feed

Associated Blogs
 
Edge City
 
Numbering Peano
 
Praxis101
 
Prof. von Clueless in the Blunder Dome

Recent Items
 
Symbols of Trust
 
The Passing of Salvatore Lombino: Farewell, 87th Precinct
 
Finding an Audience: First, Trust Them
 
Making Wiki's Conversational: Get the RSS Right
 
The power of student-teacher interaction?
 
Happy Father's Day, Steve Jobs
 
Open Minds, Yes Let's Have Some Open Minds -- and Facts, Open Facts, that would be really good.
 
Sponsored Links: Where's the Barf Bag, I'm Feeling Queezy
 
The Heavy Lifting toward Open Formats in Microsoft Office
 
Microsoft OX vs. OASIS OD: Is It Really Open Format vs. Open Standard?

Merchants of Attention

AttentionTrust.org.  Stowe Boyd mentions that Seth Godin is the launching of the non-profit AttentionTrust site.  I’ve been curious about the apparently-related attention.xml, and my radar fires on mentions of “trust,” naturally.  The problem that I ran into is that registration on the site gives up more than I am willing to surrender (use of my name) to an anonymous group with a pledge that I don’t fully understand. 

Apparently the Wikipedia folk are just as puzzled as I am.  I joined the chorus recommending that the entry be deleted until there is something of an encyclopedic nature to provide somewhere.

There are two signals that I find distrustful of AttentionTrust.  First, the anonymity of the site, with no provision of contact information or any identification of the sponsors and the erstwhile executives, is disturbing.  (I also note that a reply to the Wikipedia Votes for Deletion discussion was anonymous too.)  The first step toward trustworthiness—trusting your audience and willingness to be known—is missing.  Secondly, there is an implied (to me) commoditization of attention, as if it is a property right.  This brings up the specter of trafficking in attention, and I find that basically weird.  Can I rent my attention?  How about selling options?  Can I bequeath it?

Until someone explains what the pledge is really about in terms of the underlying social theory (and metaphysics?), I am not lending my name to it.  What do we think we are advocating, manipulating, or establishing here?  It strikes me that AttentionTrust is positioning itself against something, but I can’t quite figure out what it is for, nor what sort of ontological commitment accompanies this particular appeal to attention as property.  In taking this (defensive?) posture, aren’t we granting too much to those who think our attention is something for them to command, manipulate, shape, and traffic in?  In putting the debate in those terms, have we already conceded the battleground?  And why are we picking a fight in the first place?

Meanwhile, you can find out more about AttentionTrust by googling for the people who are talking about it and to one degree or other “in on it.”  There’s more information, however speculatory and hopeful, than is available on the site itself.  When someone breaks the code and declares what this is fundamentally about and what it offers us, I will pay more attention.  So far, I’m running a trade deficit here and I’m out of loose change at the moment.

{updated for tagging: HonorTagPersonal AttentionTrust attention.xml trustworthiness}