Attention and software

RELease 1.0, March 26, 1992 by Michael Goldhaber

(1) The audience situation doesn't have to be exactly like a conversation. Back at the barter level, if you happened to know a skater but knew nothing about skating and didn't follow sports, you might find her performance of some interest, depending on how much you could empathize with the physical effort she was making. A good figure skater, like a good speaker, would know how to obtain empathy - drawing you into her motions, so that you would feel suspense at each turn or jump and satisfaction in her smoothness, continuity, and rhythms; instead of mental questions, you would be connected through imagined parallel motions of your own body. Still, even experiencing all this, without a context for measuring her performance or her attention-getting prowess, you may feel you're doing her a favor to watch. Later, you find out that your friend Yamaguchi has won the Olympic gold, and your feelings about the transaction most likely change sharply. Suddenly you feel indebted for the privilege of a private show by one who you now know can command a huge audience; you belatedly realize that what you saw, apparently staged for your benefit, was far out of the ordinary.

Attention debt and investment

To discharge their sense of obligation, audience members may write fan letters and look with interest at commercials or ads featuring the performer. They may go to considerable lengths to see her in person - travelling long distances, waiting in long lines and paying substantial admission charges, waiting in line again to get her autograph. Or if she should make a local appearance they are willing and even honored to perform all manner of services for her, from getting her a glass of water to performing sexual favors or putting her up as a house guest. Since the audience effect gives the performer an aura of importance, these further contacts can bestow overflow, derived attention on the fan, leaving the fan with further feelings of indebtedness to the star.

PCS IN THE ATTENTION ECONOMY

I've been using the terms star and fan respectively to denote people who get more attention than they give, attention getters, and people who give more attention than they get, attention givers. Stars include not only the usual roster of singers, actors and other performers, but also journalists, chefs, politicians, architects, authors, scientists, even ceos - whoever has been in a position to build up an audience of fans. Not all stars are as famous as major media stars. The attention economy also works on a smaller scale.

This is where pcs fit in. They are one of a number of tools that both have extended and deepened the penetration of the attention economy, particularly over the last decade, allowing far more people to become stars of sorts, or try to. In this context, a pc is an attention-getting device, a sort of personal broadcasting station or publishing house for its user. Beyond that, software helps the user to project a specific image, acting as make-up for the mind.

  While the term "spreadsheet" was taken over from the supposedly
      unglamorous world of CPAs, it's no accident that among the main
      selling points of new spreadsheet packages are their "exciting"
      graphics displays and output.