Attention Complex, The: Media, Archeology, Method

Description: In recent years, a pronounced transformation of human attention has been taking place. From the epidemic diagnoses of ADHD to the calculable metrics of the 'attention economy,' a groundswell of discourses have intensified scrutiny on attention as a social problem that cuts across psychology, economics, art and design, media technology, popular culture, and the experience of everyday life. Kenneth Rogers takes the vital first step in the project of mapping out the complex of power relations that surround and support the proliferating technologies, knowledge systems, and social practices of attention. By unfolding the dramatic historical development of attention's successive disappearance, return, and transformation within formal scientific knowledge, he arrives at a better understanding how the vestiges of political power deeply inform the rise of new attention technologies and the pervasive social and cultural uses of attention in today's society.

Review: "The Attention Complex certainly got my attention: it is a lively read rife with smart insights about the cultural logic of attention, as well as thoroughly convincing historicization of the 'invention' of ADHD." - Jasbir Puar, Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA, and author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times

Contents: PART I: ATTENTION SHIFTS 1. Behavior 2. Cognition 3. Complex PART II: ATTENTION DEFICITS 4. Resources 5. Game of Life



Author Biography: Kenneth Rogers is Assistant Professor in the Department of Film at York University, Canada.