The World Beyond Your Head

In the book, the term “crisis of attention” is described as a significant cultural and psychological challenge, emerging predominantly from the distractions and demands of modern life, which fragment our capacity to focus and maintain a coherent self. This crisis, according to Crawford, stems not only from the omnipresence of digital technologies but is also a result of deep-seated cultural changes that began in the Enlightenment and have accelerated in the modern era. These changes promote a view of humans primarily as consumers of information, leading to a highly mediated existence where we increasingly interact with the world through representations that are designed and controlled by external entities. This mediation manipulates and exploits our attention for commercial gain, thereby making the human experience a ‘manufacturable’ and manipulable entity. Crawford explores how this manipulation of attention impacts our self-autonomy and the ability to engage in meaningful activities that require sustained focus and skill. 

Crawford discusses the concept of “ecologies of attention” to describe how the environments we inhabit shape and influence our attentional focus. Crawford argues that our attention is not only a personal cognitive function but also a resource that interacts with and is molded by our surrounding environment, which he terms an “ecology.