Claudio Celis Bueno - The Attention Economy: Labour, Time and Power in Cognitive Capitalism

The Attention Economy

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THEORY, CULTURE AND POLITICS

Critical Perspectives on Theory, Culture and Politics is a new interdisciplinary series developed in partnership with the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory based in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, UK. This interdisciplinary series focuses on innovative research produced at the interface between critical theory and cultural studies. In recent years, much work in Cultural Studies has increasingly moved away from directly criticaltheoretical concerns. One of the aims of this series is to foster a renewed dialogue between Cultural Studies and Critical and Cultural Theory in its rich, multiple dimensions.

Series editors:

Glenn Jordan, Reader in Cultural Studies and Creative Practice and Director of Butetown History & Arts Centre, University of South Wales.

Laurent Milesi, Reader in English, Communication and Philosophy and Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University.

Radhika Mohanram, Professor of English and Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University

Chris Norris, Distinguished Research Professor, Cardiff University

Chris Weedon, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Director of Postgraduate Studies and Head of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University.

Culture Control Critique: Allegories of Reading the Present, Frida Beckman

Creole in the Archive: Imagery, Presence and the Location of the Caribbean Figure, Roshini Kempadoo

Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence, Gnther Anders and Christopher John Mller, translated by Christopher John Mller

The Attention Economy: Labour, Time, and Power in Cognitive Capitalism, Claudio Celis

Postcolonial Nostalgia and the Construction of a South-Asian Diaspora, Anindya Raychaudhuri (forthcoming)

Cultures of the Extreme: From Abu Ghraib to Saw and Beyond, Pramod K. Nayar, (forthcoming)

Credo Credit Crisis: Speculations on Faith and Money, edited by Laurent Milesi, Christopher John Mller and Aidan Tynan (forthcoming)

Materialities of Sex in a Time of HIV: The Promise of Vaginal Microbicides, Annette-Carina van der Zaag (forthcoming)

Performative Contradiction and the Romanian Revolution, Jolan Bogdan (forthcoming)

Partitions and their Afterlives: Violence, Memories, Living, edited by Radhika Mohanram and Anindya Raychaudhuri (forthcoming)

Music, Photography, and the Aesthetics of Time, Peter R Sedgwick and Kenneth Gloag, (forthcoming)

The Attention Economy

Labour, Time and Power in
Cognitive Capitalism

Claudio Celis Bueno

Contents

First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Peter Sedgwick for his detailed and patient readings, his guidance, corrections and suggestions, and his always-friendly character. Without his commitment, this book would not have been possible. I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of Dr. Marcelo Svirsky, Prof. Chris Weedon, Dr. Aidan Tynan, Dr. Laurent Milesi, Dr. Iain MacKenzie and Dr. Josh Robinson. I am grateful for their support, their feedback and their advice. I also appreciate the contribution of fellow colleagues, in particular that of Caleb Sivyer, Marija Grech and Jernej Markelj.

I would like to thank the staff and technicians in the School of English, Communications & Philosophy at Cardiff University for all their help. I would like to express special gratitude to Rhian Rattray for her kindness and willingness to help during my time in this institution.

Very special thanks to Mirona Moraru for those innumerable hours of proofreading, guidance, advice and discussion. It would be difficult to imagine this work without her insights, her continuous encouragement, her patience and her always positive spirit.

Finally, I am grateful to CONICYT for sponsoring the research out of which this book was born.

In a world in which information and knowledge become central to the valorization process of capital, human attention becomes a scarce and hence increasingly valuable commodity. In this new context, some authors belonging to the field of political economy have forged the notion of the attention economy (Simon ). In an attempt to explain the growing importance of human attention in societies characterized by post-industrial modes of production, these authors contend that the richer a society is in terms of its production, distribution and consumption of information, the poorer it becomes in terms of human attention. Inventions such as the Internet, e-mail, databases, digital television, social media, and so on, together with the radical informatization of the process of production of commodities have created both an abundance of information and a demand for new forms of organizing and allocating attention.

At the same time, critical studies in the field of communications have highlighted the fact that in post-industrial societies, paying attention becomes a new form of labour. Sut Jhally and Bill Livant (these critical accounts of the attention economy suggest that attention must be understood not only as a valuable commodity but mainly as a labouring activity which, although not necessarily grounded on abstract labour time, nevertheless involves exploitation and power relations.