The Attention Economy: Labour, Time and Power in Cognitive Capitalism

Description

The attention economy is a notion that explains the growing value of human attention in societies characterised by post-industrial modes of production. In a world in which information and knowledge become central to the valorisation process of capital, human attention becomes a scarce and hence increasingly valuable commodity. To what degree is the attention economy a specific form of capitalist production? How does the attention economy differ from the industrial mode of production in which Marx developed his critique of capitalism? How can Marx's theory be used today despite the historical differences that separate industrial from post-industrial capitalism? The Attention Economy argues that human attention is a new form of labour that can only be understood through a systematic reinterpretation of Marx. It argues that the attention economy belongs to a general shift in capitalism in which subjectivity itself becomes the territory of production and exploitation of value as well as the territory of the reproduction of capitalist power relations. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction The Concept of Attention Economy The Cognitive Capitalism Hypothesis Towards an Immanent Critique Chapter Outline Notes Chapter One Labour The Attention Economy from the Standpoint of Labour Watching as Working A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Concept of Labour Notes Chapter Two Value The Notion of VALORIZATION Information The Technical and Organic Composition of Capital Knowledge and Information in the Valorization Process Immaterial Labour and the Informational Content of the Commodity The Example of Toyotism The Attention Economy from the Standpoint of the Valorization Process The Deconstruction of Marx’s Labour Theory of Value Labour, Exploitation and Power Notes Chapter Three Time The Notion of Cinematic Time Cinema as a Technical Temporal Object From Deep to Hyper Attention Industrialization of Schematism The Three Passive Syntheses of Imagination Stiegler’s Reinterpretation of the Temporality of Imagination Cinematic Time and the Attention Economy Notes Chapter Four Machines A Social Theory of Flows Labour, Value and Technology in Anti-.Oedipus The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall Surplus Value of Code and Surplus Value of Flux Machinic Surplus Value Desiring-Machines and the Illegitimate Use of Syntheses Legitimate and Illegitimate uses of Syntheses The Three Passive Syntheses of the Unconscious Production, Distribution and Consumption Towards an Immanent Critique of the Attention Economy Notes Chapter Five Power Attention and Power: From Discipline to Control The Mass and the Individual The Panopticon, the Gaze and the Individual Jonathan Crary’s Genealogy of Modern Attention The Attention Economy and Control Societies The Logic of Security The Attention Economy as an Apparatus of Security The Logic of Control and the Attention Economy Machinic Enslavement and Social Subjection Notes Bibliography Index