Your Attention Please: Should human attention be treated as a scarce resource?

Tim Wu will discuss the science of attention, the history of the attention industries, and some of the harms caused by overharvesting. He will also propose a model of attention sovereignty of importance for the future. Rich or poor, man, woman or child, each of us has 168 hours per week: it is how we use that time that differentiates us. Yet we seem to live in an era where the daily demands made on our time and attention are greater than ever before. This is due both to advances in information technologies, and also the rise of Internet business models that depend on the sale of human attention. In this talk, Tim Wu will discuss the science of attention, the history of the attention industries, and some of the harms caused by overharvesting. He will also propose a model of attention sovereignty of importance for the future.