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The Politics of Attention

March 2026 • 12 min read
philosophy technology
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The modern internet is structured around the capture of human attention.1 Platforms no longer simply distribute information; they organize perception itself.2

Attention becomes a scarce resource, allocated by algorithms rather than institutions.3

1. See Herbert Simon, “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World.”

2. James Williams, “Stand Out of Our Light,” 2018.

3. Cf. Wu, Tim. “The Attention Merchants,” 2016.