Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement

by The Friends of Attention

A rallying cry to fight the commodification of human attention, with the tools we need to reclaim our humanity, by a group of writers, artists, and activists in the vanguard of the movement

We all feel something is seriously wrong. Our attention—that essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world—is being trapped, gutted, and sold out from under us by an industry of immense technological and financial power. The heedless exploitation of this vital capacity by a handful of tech companies is harming us all, reducing our very selfhood to that which can be quantified, bought, and sold—and shaking the foundations of our democracy.

To push back against this “human fracking,” we need more than individual willpower or isolated efforts. We need a movement of collective resistance. Such a movement is beginning to bloom, and in this radical, first-of-its-kind guide, The Friends of Attention show us how to join the fight. We meet welders, nurses, poets, and surfers, all of whom are engaged in attentional practices. We learn to seek out sanctuaries—theaters and museums, houses of worship, dance parties—where together we can take refuge from the frackers. Attention Activism takes our apocalyptic present, turns it on its head, and reveals new vistas of human flourishing.

Drawing on a rich legacy of critical intellectuals and the creative wisdom of diverse traditions, Attensity calls on us to come together to defeat the greedy dehumanizing forces of brute instrumentalization—and re-enchant the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Self Help, Politics, Sociology, Society, Psychology

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 20, 2026

Reviews

[Max Church · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. You remember that episode of South Park where Randy moves to San Fransisco and can’t stop smelling his own farts? That’s the people who wrote this book.

Pretentious, not a single piece of research seems to be put into this book? Stats thrown at you with no source? Like I want to be on board but it just seems like a bunch of people got together and just decided that they knew a bunch about something they don’t know that much about?

Message is good but the messengers are faulty. Screams NYC supper club faux activism.

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style of this was made for 2017, and while grating, I still found some of it to be helpful

[Aga · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

I went into this book genuinely excited. With such a timely subject and the promise of exploring how technology is shaping — and reshaping — our attention, I expected insight, research, and meaningful reflection.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I found. Rather than an examination of attention in the modern world, this book presents a collective manifesto, with each chapter functioning as a short statement or declaration. While the concept itself is interesting, the execution didn’t work for me.

For a topic of this importance, the lack of depth was disappointing. There is very little scientific grounding or research to support the ideas presented, and the format left no room for nuance or deeper exploration. I found myself wanting the book to engage more critically with the subject, but it remained largely surface-level throughout.

While I appreciate the intention behind this project, the execution didn’t meet my expectations, and I was left wanting far more depth and evidence for such a complex topic.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The more I think about this book, the more disappointed I am. The tone was weird, almost infantilizing, and I’m just not sure who the target audience is. I’m fully on board with the whole idea but still found myself distinctly un-rallied by this.

[Helena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea a lot more than the tedious execution.

[Bernadette Badamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book… it zooms out the idea of “attention” from what we all think of as phone addiction and really opens your eyes to what parts of life and humanity are being sucked away from us constantly by the attention economy. Really made me think (and delete instagram)

[Elan Garfias]

This is one framework for hacked attention spans that actually leaves the reader kind of hopeful. Just like the obesity epidemic and the cratering of American public health gave rise to mass fitness culture and the proliferation of gyms and health culture, we’re still reeling from the early days of a new phase in the attention war and need mass movements to fight back. The authors draw on a wide range of activities to counteract the attention drain, from music practice to skilled labor to Bible memorization. Can’t wait to pay these guys a visit.

[Michael K. Wilkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an explicit and self-conscious call to action to resist the fragmentation of society by the constant siren’s call of the attention economy that isolates and divides us from one another. What action? Mostly, to do things with other people in person in a way that defies what they call “attention fracking”—squeezing ever more moments of monetized screen-based attention from the public. Examples include going to band practice, playing D&D, and growing bonsai trees. I endorse all of this whole heartedly.

It is a real pity that the book is weighed down by the language of lefty activists/academics, much as with How to Do Nothing. To inspire the kind of change this manifesto seems to want, reaching the broadest possible audience is imperative, but they cannot resist drawing analogies that will only appeal to lefties, such as the central “fracking” metaphor, which only really works for you if you believe fossil fuel fracking to be bad. They also approach their subject elliptically, constantly promising that they’re going to explain things and forcing you to wait until much later in the book to find out what they’re talking about (including a long digression about not trusting scientists while insisting that that’s not what they’re saying) instead of just building an argument. Contrast this with The Sirens’ Call, which presents a much more linear, accessible, and compelling account than is rendered here. I think this book does not do much more than rally people already inclined to agree with the authors and who already share, or at least aren’t put off by, their lefty worldview. It’s therefore hard to imagine this book having the kind of Silent Spring–like impact the authors explicitly hope for (though I’ve never read Silent Spring, so for all I know it reads much like Attensity!).

That said, the goals of the authors, to rebuild a society that had been falling apart for decades before social media and AI appeared (as diagnosed in Bowling Alone), align well with my own, and I found reading this book a welcome occasion to reflect on the subject. I think I would recommend The Sirens’ Call and The Anxious Generation well before I would Attensity!, but they are, I think, getting at something important about how attention works. It’s not just our ability to focus on a task, particularly a screen-based one, and the crisis of attention is not just about shortening attention spans but about what we give our attention to and what forms our attention is allowed to take.

I think there is a more precise and more compelling version of this that could be written (and it may already be lingering out there in the vast literature I haven’t read) that disentangles the anti-capitalist aspect of their argument, makes more concrete recommendations, and provides a more actionable definition of attention in the first place, but the authors are engaged in important work, and if this book serves the role they hope it will, that would be no bad thing.

[Isabella K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the contents of Attensity (the soundbites on attention-fracking, the need for "attention sanctuaries," and the resistance against the commodification of our attention that has historically lined the pockets of the world's wealthiest corporations), but they lost me with the packaging. My woo-woo radar gets activated when a book is marketed as a "manifesto" written by a mysterious, amorphous group known as the "friends of attention," who gather in secret to discuss the "attention liberation movement." Attensity's authorship takes itself too seriously, which makes it difficult to engage with seriously as a reader. A shame because we should all probably heed the advice in this book. Sorry -- manifesto.

[Jacob Dayton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review TL;DR: the core thesis is great and the message is one we should all get behind. So why is it that the authors felt the need to alienate a majority of their potential audience?

The message really is great, and there are some really interesting insights and comparisons brought up in this book. I especially like the idea of “distraction” being true attention (loosely) and the self-awareness that social-movements can be negatively disruptive to democracy, removing agency in some cases, but the necessity for a movement in breaking stale molds!

But mostly this book made me frustrated. The Authors felt the need to frequently reference controversial, or at least not yet entirely accepted, political stances as though they are tied directly to the nature of Attention Activism. The problems we face when it comes to monetizing attention stretch across all boundaries, and affect everyone universally!

In some cases, topics such as climate change are brought up as a point of reference, and this is fine. But frequently the authors make tactical language decisions to convey certain extraneous opinions as true by default. The problem with this is that it (perhaps—ironically—*unintentionally*?) ties these irrelevant opinions to the Attention Activism movement.

This is obviously damaging to the movement! The point should not be “only the politcal left” or “only the politcal right” will agree with this fight. It needs to universal. What’s more is that the more opinions thrown into the now omnibus movement further decreases the odds the reader has the exact matching opinion set. All of this is tangential to the issue at hand in the book. If you make your readers feel like they are in enemy territory, or forcing them to agree with unrelated opinions they don’t share in order to adopt the CORE belief of this book, your limit the spread of your ideology and your movement.

I agree with the message, and would consider myself an “Attention Activist”, but I find it hard to see myself recommending this book to anyone because of the *irrelevant* included opinions a they might assume I’ve adopted.

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading with excitement but it failed to hold my attention. I like the focus on what they've called attention fracking / an increased awareness of what the attention economy is doing but wish they offered actionable steps.

[Chris Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more. Honestly, it was one of those purchase I made based on the cover, which is always a gamble. It's asking some good questions about our modern ideas around attention and our waning ability for attention based in care, curiosity, and beauty. There's also some helpful cultural analysis that really rang true for me - particularly the idea about an attention economy.

Where I found it lacking was in its alternative vision. It offered ideas of gathering, but I found it lacking in naming a depth to this new vision. Someone like Brother Lawrence or the Bhagavad Gita offer a spiritual or depth dimension to the ordinary, whereas Attensity takes a purely humanistic approach. There were several points throughout the book where I thought it was going to bring this spiritual, mystery, or depth dimension into the conversation, but it only mentioned spiritual traditions briefly here and there like a stone skipping over the water.

In all, I'm glad I read it, but I was also left wanting.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit overly self-aggrandizing. It felt very “group of hippies descend on one hippie’s rural property and decide SOMETHING MUST BE DONE about THE! ATTENTION! ISSUE! But they also decide data or measurable evidence or even specific desired outcomes from readers/society are not worth the bother lol. However they spent a lot of time reading books related to this topic so I’ll give them that.

But the points made were generally good. Gave me some new ideas and ways of thinking about the issue. All told still worth the read for me and I think it positively influenced me and how I think about attention fracking. It’s a scary thing fr you guys. Just like literally everything else in our burning hellscape of a society. We can all only pick so many things to care about.

[Chris Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely important topic
executed as a 'grab your pitchforks' rally cry.

is a really important concept, explained poorly, still a really important concept.

I think it is.

Others will do this better, but maybe this is simply the fun light that leads the way.

4 stars for the effort, and the importance of the topic.

[Lizzie]

Had to read for work!

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t really write reviews but, because I am a dork, I ended up writing a tiny essay on this book to get my thoughts fully fleshed out so bear with me. I actually almost didn’t read this book because of the reviews, despite my deep, abiding interest in this topic. I picked it up because it was there at the library and so I said under my breath, “oh alright.” I also picked up Like, Follow, Subscribe by Fortesa Latifi at the same time and began reading them simultaneously.

Like, Follow, Subscribe is about the world of eerie, strange and yet mundane commodification of motherhood and how it affects the children specifically. Attensity is about the eerie, strange, mundane online commodification of everything that we all find ourselves in right now and what to do to resist it. I think reading Attensity alone, I may have had similar feelings to some of the other reviews - interesting but a little vague and (like my favorite review) “smelling their own farts.” However, read with Like, Follow, Subscribe, it grounded Attensity for me and provided a clearer reflection of just what The Friends of Attention are getting at in their book.

The topic of online commodification itself is weird and amorphous, a little vague, and can be argued either way. Even with something as obvious as the violation of childhood privacy for money and views, Fortessa Latifi feels that strangeness and finds herself talking in circles, trying to make sense of it all. She concludes the book with “I’m talking in circles. Let me clarify. Here is where I have landed, after hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of researching and writing. The money is eye watering; the fame is intoxicating; the possibility for economic freedom is dizzying. I know all of that. And still, I would never - ever, not for a second - make the trade.” (pg 244).

To me, this is the core of Attensity too and places it firmly in an experience we all have had. Yes, we know that online commodification of all of our lives can be fascinating to watch, fun to talk about, absorbing, tempting, but also empty, weird, worrying and downright wrong.

A very telling paragraph in Like, Follow, Subscribe really connects to the very question at the core of Attensity:

“Gjinishi says it disturbs her, this idea that every single part of life can be packed and commodified and sold. But there’s also a part of her that sympathizes with the people packaging their lives because they live within a system that demands constant commodification… “There’s no way out of it,” she says and is quiet for a moment. “So I think there is a bit of hopelessness, maybe.” (page 133).

And The Friends of Attention are talking about just this hopelessness in their book:

“The basic reality is we are currently living in such a world. How? Like this: The attention economy appears to turn attention into “value”: but it's exactly the other way around. It is attention itself that makes things valuable. It is by means of our attention that we constitute the values of this world: What we care about, what we give ourselves to, what we endow with time and touch and thought, what we stay with, what we circle back toward; these are the things that become valuable. In the fracklands of the twenty-first century, we are being bought and sold with our own coin.” (pg 122).

They argue that we must take back our attention and decide where to place it, specifically on things that we love, the people that we love, and share it with people outside of commodification. “Grab up the attentional practices that you’ve got! Have your neighbor teach you what she knows! And share what you are learning! Because this is literally all we have.” (pg 202)

In Like, Follow, Subscribe, the feeling of hopelessness at the world we are in described above, permeates the pages. The human care of motherhood and the loneliness new mothers feel are mined for value, both for the person who makes the video (for money) and the one who watches (for connection), so far apart. A thin veneer of connection is being sought in the dark, in a room, nursing a baby with a phone in one hand but it isn’t real and we all feel that. It’s hollow at best and sinister at worst.

The Friends of Attention say… “the goodness of consciousness itself is now being remorselessly laid waste by a shocking new industry that recklessly and efficiently and surreptitiously converts human care (and interest and desire) into… MONEY. And this deranged enterprise is harming us all. Attention Activism says NO!” (pg 229).

After reading both of these books, I feel like the Friends of Attention have something really important to say on this topic and is absolutely worth a read. Reading it alongside another book on a concrete example of online commodification provides a lot of clarity on what Attensity is talking about. Excited to see more of what Friends of Attention do!

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, but this is difficult; if it were possible to award five stars for intent and trumpeting a just cause I would not hesitate, however in reality intent versus execution I am being generous in awarding two stars, regrettably.
For what seems like decades we have been watching (and allowing) the erosion of our attention, together with loss of our privacy, the deterioration of the mental health of us and our children, dumbing of our collective intelligence, etc., etc.) to the point now where one we must acknowledge to a large degree that combating on a collective basis is futile. Our “Bread and circuses” (Juvenal warned Romans of collective apathy in his time) have for us come home to roost. Our “circuses” the willing erosion of our privacy and individuality through technological comfort and frivolous amusement has taken an irreversible toll. The constant Brain-Fracking will only get worse and a well-intentioned Manifesto to combat same will make little difference unfortunately.
A well-intentioned narrative that speaks of fighting back with community advocacy, finger painting exercises in church basements, chess clubs, art installations etc., is beyond naïveté almost bordering on pollyannish dreaming. Hello Manifesto Authors!! the barbarians are not at the gates anymore they are well entrenched inside the walls; in fact, they are in charge; we too by our poor choices are complicit and are also the barbarians. This manifesto principled (well-intentioned) is twenty years too late. All we can do is try to save what little remains of our individual sanity by whatever means available to us. The chapter on Political action is laughable: the Tech-Bros are firmly in charge and effective political counter action in our lifetime is highly doubtful!
The least that is said about the formatting of this book the better. Red typeface! each chapter introduction four or five wasted pages in obnoxious red glare!

[Yasmeen Jaaber · Rating 5 out of 5]

so excited to continue studying attention in my day to day. i liked a lot of the ideas and tone of this, but there was hella italics. making me so excited about being offa my phone and onto myself. i like the emphasis on going forward vs. going back to the way things were. because, as much as i love nostalgia, that's not a solution really. and there does need to be revolution, even reconsidering our relationship to media as a whole. and as a humanity. rare books can make me think of humanity as a whole like this one did. read this at work which i also found interesting and have just been talking about it with everyone i know.

[Delaney Broeckert]

DNF. I liked the structure in theory; the manifesto/mission statement is broken up sentence by sentence, which creates "chapters" going in depth on each piece of the statement. But it ends up repeating the same point. The tone is quite emotional when I would've preferred factual. They make some bold claims and then say "look up the research yourself" and even go as far as to discount research/science altogether. Feels ironic that I couldn't pay attention to a book on attention. It's an important cause but these "Friends of Attention" are not going to garner genuine activism like this.

[Katy Koivastik · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Attensity”, and the authors, The Friends of Attention, advise readers to rise up and learn what our neighbors know, and pass it on. They also recommend sitting and conversing with people who will someday be dead. Sobering.

[Sebastián Echeandía Reynés · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corny, but if you look past that, the commentary is on point.

[Joseph Goergen]

High school ass take on a serious problem

[Mike Wenzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great call to use our attention to create a better world.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

HARD. LONG. Read.

I read all "238" pages (not really that many, they just liked the number I guess) so:
TLDR; This was like eating poop from a butt. The Friends of Attention is made of of liberal art majors (as an anth major myself) discussing how we should replicate the 60's-70's hippie movement of ecology (which is much more than that, but to the writers-thats all.) ATTENSITY is nothing but DOING STUFF. This book was doing way too much every other word was italicized or all caps.

There is multiple ideological contradictions with the insistence against forcing the mode of doom down your throat at every moment, and then a page later IN ALL CAPS DISCUSSING HOW WE ARE DOOMED IF WE DO NOT FIX OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THAT PHONE.

Also, there is some troubling potential ableism that irked me considering it’s ideas about SANCTUARIES being FOR ALL PEOPLE to heal with one ANOTHER. The book references disabilities as an impact of Cognitive Capitalism (the book titled this HUMAN FRACKING) which I think could easily still be included if there was some discussion of medical vs social lenses of disability, how human fracking has influenced our relationship with the world so much students don’t care for tests or get bored in conversations (not ADHD)- I think this would actually make the book less pompous.

The call to action for "deaths of despair" and isolation (as a result of ever-expansive and violently extractive forms of capitalism) is to #NotGiveUp and "go vote" (engage in civic institutions already co-opted by capitalism) - "We write, we rabble, we DO STUFF" [real excerpt btw] - They then call this revolutionary, which I thought was an insult to people who sweat and die in real material revolutions.

ATTENSITY! as "The Friend's" response seems vague and pathetic. "We don't just resist the bad stuff" (okay, I think to myself, we're finally getting somewhere) "We are continually working ... A world remade through attentional emancipation. Our motto for this big campaign, ATTENSITY". Oh. my. god. I read this entire book just to understand that you DO STUFF to "emancipate attention". Save your time, ATTENSITY! is just a rally point for others to do their work, those STUFFY CONVERSATIONS and MOBILIZATIONS is the work of other people finding how to best put down the phone and call representatives, who get paid from frackers, later.

[Nicole]

2026 #20

[jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

things did not have to take this shape. it bears saying up front—things could have been different. but the fact of the matter is this: over the last thirty years, the explosive growth of the internet and the global proliferation of data devices have converged with a series of shortsighted political decisions; along the way, the shrewd initiative of a generation of tech entrepreneurs had produced, in effect, an ostensibly "free" digital universe—whose hidden operating cost is the depletion and pollution of the minds and senses of its users.

sound message sometimes eclipsed by its medium

[Gimley Farb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this 4 stars for political purposes. Is that allowed? Try and stop me.

Back in the 60s, we used to distinguish between the activists and the heads. The activists were the political people. They were out there on the front lines, protesting the war in Vietnam and the like. Meanwhile, the heads were dropping acid and smoking weed. The activists saw the heads as world-rejecting hedonists. The heads (I was one) saw the activists as superficial--thinking that change came from the outside when the world was actually a reflection of who we truly were. "Off the pig!" yelled the activists. "Off the pig in yourself," we heads would reply.

More than half a century later, I can look back and see that both groups were partially right and partially wrong. Changing the world isn't as simple a problem as it appears when you are young. "But it's a crisis!" I hear the young people exclaim. (This is a book with an exclamation point as part of the title.) It's always a crisis though. We had nuclear war lurking in the background way back then. You can't tell me that wasn't a crisis.

There's a lot wrong with this book (and I DO plan on being more specific) but it means well and that counts for something. (but not for EVERYTHUNG so it didn't get 5 stars.) NO, I DON'T OFTEN USE ALL CAPS for emphasis but this book does. And sometimes if you use too many caps, it's the lower case words that stand out--because attention is drawn to contrast. Is it OK for attention to be so drawn? Or must we be in charge of where it goes? Can we be in charge of the part of us that is in charge? Is there free will? My attention is wandering. Let's get back to the review.

Fact is, we don't pay sufficient attention to our attention. If this book (and this review) do nothing else, I hope it will change that (at least for a few moments). But this book, written by the Friends of Attention, singles out Enemies of Attention--so called frackers of our attention. (The Quaker reference to "friends" is intentional, but Quakers don't use the term in contrast to enemies.) The enemies are large corporations who wish to make money from our attention--who are already making money from our attention. The current crisis, and it IS (sorry for the caps) a crisis, centers on our phones and on social media. They don't measure this because (and I quote) "Quantification is the first step toward monetization. And so we refuse the datafication of attention, in order to insist on a fuller vision of human existence." Making money itself isn't considered the problem. They aren't giving this book away. ($14 for the Kindle edition seems outrageous considering the tiny wordcount. The print edition claims to have 256 pages, but many have only a single sentence.) There are occasional references to capitalism but the book as a whole is capitalist friendly. Sora, the organization out of which this book arises, charges $250 for 3 evening seminars. To me, that's a lot. I suppose if you see this as a movement of the upper middle class, that could make sense. But this is looking more like a first world problem than an actual crisis.

The book at times commands us to pay attention to those things in the margins that we normally ignore, so I read the copyright page. When is the last time you read a copyright page? (Not that I'm measuring). It says the things we are familiar with hearing about supporting authors and publishers and such. It contains the astonishing line: "Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems."

But, because I read the news and pay attention, I remembered something about Penguin Random House: "On November 25, 2020, The New York Times reported that Penguin Random House was planning to purchase Simon & Schuster from Viacom-CBS (later known as Paramount Global) for $2.175 billion. However, on November 2, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice sued to stop the deal on antitrust grounds, a suit that eventually succeeded on October 31, 2022. The deal formally collapsed on November 22, 2022." In other words, we are dealing with a big corporation here. They are out to make money from our attention to books. But books are OK, right? I mean this is Goodreads! Owned by a big corporation. One that fracks our attention, I'm sure. I hope this review stays up. Don't tell anyone!

The attention crisis is a political problem, the Friends tell us. Political problems are hard. We can see that all around us, if we're paying--you know. Other reviews found the book's politics problematic. They worried that it distracted from the message. The Friends, and here I agree, would say that the politics are essential to the message. "At the heart of the attention economy is a LIE" . . . [that it is] “selection for a task.” This impoverishes our understanding of what attention is. This makes it easier for the Enemies to frack our attention. It narrows our humanness. The point of the book is for us to realize it doesn't have to be this way and to become an attention activist. It is up to us to push back. So yes, I think the actual problem is a bit more complicated than that but I'd be happy to call myself an attention activist and push back against the frackers. (My attention is called to notice that my spellcheck is ok with "frack" but not "frackers." Well frack that! I'm not changing it.)

How do we push back? For one, we refuse to give over our attention in return for money. I quote: "to exchange our attention “like” money or “for” money will always be attended by loss." Simply lowering your screen time counts as resistance--activism. I'm not so sure about that, but . . .
It wants us to do for our inner environment what the environmental protection agency does for the outer--was this written before the Trump administration gutted it?
It goes on to discuss "sanctuaries" for our attention, for study to understand our attention (unfracking of a sort) and mobilization (getting together as a movement! )
Well, I'm for all that but I need to say that they are skipping lots of steps. The motivation to stay glued to a phone is not only from the outside. We are complicit in it and we are complicit in much that is happening--we publish with large corporations. We have needs that are not being met that are satisfied by liking and subscribing. They note this, and want us to realize it and resist, but psychology isn't as simple as insight and will anymore than a diet will be enough to get you to lose weight. Sora (the school of radical attention) uses substack which will ask us to like and subscribe. They give limited scholarships--they are registered as a non-profit--but their classes are priced for rich people. The call is coming from inside the house! (The book makes lots of cultural references like this which often have been created by those in league with the Enemies.)
So this review is a big spoiler for the book--nearly as big as the book itself. So let's all be attention activists together! I have to edit it a bit more--I'll be back.

[Tutu · Rating 1 out of 5]

It engages with a topic I really care about, and it feels very timely. I appreciated the urgency and activist energy behind it. But for me, it felt a bit surface-level. The ideas are compelling, yet not explored in enough depth, which made it harder for me to stay engaged. It is a strong call to action, but I wish it had been more grounded and nuanced.

[Kristopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm all about everything they're going for here, taps on my existential nodes like those little doctor hammers. Bit of an echo chamber but nice to see some articulation of the things I can't rattle out of my own head. Energizing, and also just a very cool layout/print. Casts the net right, too, and points the proper fingers. For what this book is trying to do I might well give it 5 stars. Let's call it 4.5.

"We traverse daily a continuous minefield of mini-monstrosities where our attentional capacities are relentlessly broken down into ever more fleeting fragments."

"The more urgent our collective problems become, the less real they seem to be."

"Etymology always tells tales."

"Sanctuaries are, by tradition, spaces where, when calls for justice contend with calls for mercy, mercy prevails."

"There is no way to outsource understanding. And there is no other path to freedom. Without understanding, one is, simply, trapped."

"People are evidently inclined to grant legitimacy to anything that is or seems inevitable no matter how painful it may be. Otherwise the pain might be intolerable."

"They press the money out of our eyes. Out of our friends. Out of what we love. Worse, out of our need for love -- and out of our ability to love."

"Fracking the public forum has turned out to be very good business -- and very bad for the civic conditions of democratic politics."

"Our desire for connection to others; our hunger to see and be seen; our native curiosity and tendency to care -- all these aspects of our most essential natures have been tapped as access points from which money can be siphoned into the pockets of private equity financiers."

"What if...these powerful tools were geared toward connection and well-being, rather than advertising and corporate profit? What if the internet could be its own attention sanctuary?"

"People worry about their 'attention spans.' Schools fret that there's something wrong with the kids, who seem unable to 'pay attention'...It is part of what indicates just how ready we are for the catalytic emergence of a broad-based coalition dedicated to the protection, cultivation, and even, when necessary, the loving regeneration of human attention."

"Instead of the messy-but-hopeful 'enactment of democracy,' we find ourselves discharging open sewers of contempt into the ever-widening gulf between one virtual silo and another -- disintegrating our ability to recognize our common condition, achieve consensus and conflict, and thereby overcome existential threats."

"What we have, what we need, are all the very different traditions and practices of human attention: techniques of meditation and prayer, modes of athletic concentration and focus, forms of spiritual leisure and play, the solicitous eyes of mothers and grandmothers, the street smarts of the bona fide hustler, the essential absorption of a child in a sandbox."

"Never let a genuine crisis go to waste!"

"We humans are more than that which can be quantified and optimized. We deserve a world that is true to our fullness. It is our just inheritance. We therefore demand a world that accommodates the range of human attentions -- a world, in other words, that reflects the truth of who we are and what we are capable of creating."

[selin apologist · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jenny Odell has already written the definitive book about the Attention Economy and how to resist it, and most other books are just reheating her nachos, albeit without the same sharp political critique and action plan. Of the crop of post-Odell books, this is by far the worst.

I was so hopeful about ATTENSITY! because dissatisfaction with the attention economy is reaching a point of cultural breakthrough in America, from frustration with algorithms to a rancid discursive landscape online to record mental health crises among younger Americans. I think it's cool that this organization has managed to pull together the funding to host an actual in-person school and draw a full crowd out to Judson Memorial Church in NYC. I'm someone who would have loved to get involved based on premise, but was turned away by reality.

The vibes of the organization, and book, are strange, white, and cult-ish. Despite having been written by a collective, the tone of ATTENSITY! is the same as its fast-talking white male leadership: rousing, yet somehow condescending and alienating. The book identifies the villains persuasively, and I like the idea of calling out tech companies as "frackers" of human attention. But the book flounders in its politics. Despite insisting that our spoiled attentions are not our individual fault, but the result of extractive technologies, their plan of action is surprisingly individualistic. Rather than calling for us to direct our attention towards regulation (which is often the call-to-action of the environmental movement from which they draw inspiration), the authors insist that ... anything we do, besides being on our phone, is Automatic Resistance. They cite artists, Bible verse reciters, knitters, and gardeners as Attention Activists. I don't disagree that the movement should be broad and inclusive, but do the authors not realize that a lot of those same artists also have high screen times, must compete in the algorithmic economy to sell their art, are having our art co-opted by AI? There's a high-mindedness in ATTENSITY! that brushes away these messy details, occasionally condescending people who are addicted to their phones or worried about their attention spans; you could leave the book, as I did, vaguely activated against tech companies but with zero clear plan of action.

The tone of the book is written to pre-empt a lot of criticism. It raises rhetorical questions and quickly shuts them down with definitive answers. It's strangely slick-talking in its cadence, almost shoving you through the sticky parts before you can ask too many questions, like when a realtor is showing you a faulty house. Probably because of its white male leadership (the only Asian woman on the editorial team is married to the main editor, something he announced onstage at Judson in a bizarrely undercutting way, IMO) the book doesn't brushes past questions of power and difference that impact how attention activists could show up to the movement. I almost think the "collective authorship" is part of that, so we can't write it off as an exclusive project.

I hope the next iteration of resistance to the attention economy is more up to the challenge.