E-Books →Scenes of Attention Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses

This book investigates attention from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, history, anthropology, art history, and comparative literature. Each chapter begins with a concrete scene whose protagonists are trying―and often failing―to attend. Authors examine key moments in the history of the study of attention; pose attention as a philosophical problem; explore the links between attention, culture, and technology; and consider the significance of attention for conceptualizations of human subjectivity. Readers encounter nineteenth-century experiments in boredom, ornithologists conveying sound through field notations, wearable attention-enhancing prosthetics, students using online learning platforms, and inquiries into attention as a cognitive state and moral virtue.
Amid mounting concern about digital mediation of experience, the rise of "surveillance capitalism," and the commodification of attention,
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