{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "Hayes' The Sirens' Call is a compelling read and part of what makes it so compelling is his framing of attention as a finite resource that has been totally commoditized. Which, well, it has been. It's core to the tech-driven economy we find ourselves in. Everyone buys a rectangle of glass, everyone stares and swipes at the rectangle of glass endlessly. Hayes steps us through a fairly shallow chronology of how this all developed, why attention is important and on and on. Moral panics about the written word, television, a collapse of community, context and truth. If you've been alive for the smartphone error it's a lot you've lived through and can easily intuit. So yes, Hayes is quite right that everything is a battle for attention. Television still fights for it, ads do, social media is perhaps the pinnacle of that hellish battle. It's reached a point where social media isn't prioritizing what you see, it's generating it as AI slop as well. It's an unmanageable hellscape of carnival barkers. Hayes' proposed solutions aren't novel — step away from the devices, take away monetary incentives built into the constant mining of attention, returning to group chats and communication that already excludes commercial incentives. He also proposes capping time and attention granted to devices and services demanding it legislatively. That — to me — is a farcical notion. We can't pass any legislation and could certainly nothing that would be so unpopular with a thoroughly addicted population. The far better approach would be to curtail the commercial incentives of the companies benefitting from this. A lot of said companies are seeing their popularity wane across the political spectrum so, perhaps, that would be workable. Not an essential read but a perfectly fine one. : He doesn't mention Mastodon which I get — it's niche and likely will never reach that critical cultural mass. It's not designed to and that's also what makes it workable and appealing.",
  "path": "/reading/books/9780593653111/the-sirens-call",
  "publishedAt": "2025-06-16T00:00:00Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:sttgf52vkk46f6yuknvqxvgh/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "politics",
    "social media",
    "nonfiction"
  ],
  "title": "The Sirens' Call"
}