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Message posted on 29/08/2023

Online ESDiT seminar series on “Attending as practice in the attention economy”

Online ESDiT seminar series on Attending as practice in the attention economy

Within the ESDiT (Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies) project, the working group on Attention Economy organizes an online seminar-series on Attending as practice in the attention economy .

Aim: The online series aims to contribute, using philosophy and ethics, to constructively critique the attention economy (the tech industry's business model that treats human attention as a commodifiable resource).

Speakers The upcoming sessions will be: When (CET) Who Title Wednesday, September 20, 2023 1:30 PM-3:00 PM CET Yves Citton and Enrico Campo From the Attention Economy to a Politics of Curiosity Wednesday, October 11, 2023 2:00 PM-3:30 PM CET Galit Wellner The co-shaping of attention and technologies Tuesday, October 31, 2023 4:00 PM-5:30 PM Gloria Mark Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity Tuesday, December 12, 2023 3:30 PM-5:00 PM Cor van de Weele How can attention seeking be good Friday, January 12, 2024 4:00 PM-5:30 PM Mark Fortney Loving Attention: Buddhaghosa, Katsuki Sekida, and Iris Murdoch on Meditation and Moral Development

Interested in attending? Please write to Secretariat.P&E@tue.nl which of these sessions you want to attend. You will then receive a link to join the online seminar.

We are looking forward discussing this with you. Gunter Bombaerts, Alessio Gerola, Andreas Spahn, Anna Puzio, Jeroen Hopster, Joseph Sta. Maria Madelaine Ley, Lavinia Marin, Lily Frank, Madelaine Ley, Matthew Dennis, Tom Hannes,

Last years sessions Check the recordings of the session at the ESDiT website here. Who Title Peter Hershock Intelligent Technology, the Attention Economy, and the Risks of Consciousness Hacking: A Buddhist Perspective Silvia Caprioglio Panizza Grounding ethics through attention: Murdoch, Weil, and Zen Buddhism Soraj Hongladarom Toward an Ethics of Attention. Dan Nixon Just Perceive: How Phenomenology and the Arts Can Guide Us in the Tech Era. Sebastian Watzl And Katharine Naomi Whitfield Browne

The Commodification of Attention. An analysis and ethical assessment. Tom Hannes The attention of ethics. Matthew Dennis Repurposing Persuasive Technologies for Digital Well-Being.

Background The attention economy refers to the tech industry's business model that treats human attention as a commodifiable resource. The libertarian critique of this model, dominant within tech and philosophical communities, claims that the persuasive technologies of the attention economy infringe on the individual user's autonomy and therefore the proposed solutions focus on safeguarding personal freedom through expanding individual control. While this push back is important, it uncritically accepts the framing of attention as a scarce commodity, giving rise to incomplete assessments of the moral significance of attention, and obscuring richer sets of ethical strategies to cope with the challenges of the attention economy. We step away from a negative analysis in terms of external distractions and aim for positive answers, by approaching attention as practice. The series engages with speakers from all kinds of backgrounds (philosophy on authors like Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, Simone Weil, Merleau-Ponty, Harry Frankfurt, or Buddhist ethics ; psychology; artificial intelligence; ). Questions that will be central in the online series: 1-What do attention and related concepts mean in the attention economy? 2-How is attention a basis for or related to morality? 3-How can attention (and related concepts) be built in the design of the attention economy in a humane way? To answer this last question, we think the philosophical debate should turn from a negative to a positive focus:

  • From What are the distractions? to How can wisdom practices, virtues, support a desirable form of attention?;
  • From I must take back control of my attention to How can we use attention for flourishing, wisdom, ?;
  • From reacting against promising (false?) free comfort to supporting acceptance of necessary effort; and
  • From increasing individual needs in the attention economy to support collective or intentional joint attention in the attention ecology.

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