Scenes of Attention

This book brings together beautifully written and diverse perspectives on attention: as phenomenon, scholarly practice, memoir, meditation, metahistory, and art. Required reading in an era of exponential financialization and attention deficit disorder at civilizational scale. -- Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google Research
These vivid and varied essays are a much-needed antidote to the flattened attention of the click economy. Here are the many dimensions of attention we've been missing: historical, philosophical, psychological, anthropological, and, yes, technological. This timely collection broadens and deepens current debates about the future of attention—and distraction. -- Lorraine Daston, author of Rules: A Short History of What We Live By
Scenes of Attention is, in all the best ways, scholarly, inspiring, and unsettling. Its diverse contributors address this most urgent of topics so wisely, and articulate the results of their thinking with such readable lucidity, that one feels as if the complexities of attention had been brought freshly before us, in higher definition than before, and with a depth that had previously been foreshortened. -- Christopher Mole, author of Attention Is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology
A wonderfully eclectic examination of attention, Scenes of Attention illuminates this central aspect of mind through different vignettes and rich theoretical perspectives that reveal the diversity of how we attend, how attention is shaped, manipulated and transformed. Accessible and engaging, it will provide ample material for productive reflection. -- Wayne Wu, author of Movements of the Mind: A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action
A very stimulating volume, Scenes of Attention revolves around the question of how best to approach, understand, and respond to the 'crisis of attention' that we all feel, to varying degrees, in the age of hypermediated multitaskery. These essays provide an interdisciplinary inquiry into the most pressing (and enduring) issues around the attention ecology. -- Dominic Pettman, author of Infinite Distraction
Burnett and Smith invite us to sit in our seats and silence our cell phones so that our full attention can be given to the increasingly relevant work on what attention is, how it has changed, and how society, business, and more are grasping the shifting landscape. * British Society for Literature and Science *