Concept
Attention Mining
AIHuman & Future
An industry in which human attention is extracted and depleted like a natural resource.
Notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and micro-interactions — all are methods for separating attention from its ore. Attention mining carries fossil-fuel logic into consciousness: the gains accrue today, the environmental damage (sleep, focus, mental health) is amortised across time.
Related concepts
- Algorithmic SurrenderThe quiet, voluntary handover of decision to the machine in the name of convenience.
- Epistemic WeaponisationAn information strategy targeting the status of truth, not its content.
- Jevons ParadoxWhen a technology that uses a resource becomes more efficient, total consumption of that resource rises rather than falls.
- Rebound EffectEvery unit of efficiency saving is refilled by new demand and new capacity.