The Attention Economy Essay Example

Technology has changed significantly in recent decades, and as a result, people have begun to question the impact of using the Internet to this extent. It's a good topic to discuss, nowadays phones grab everyone's attention and it keeps you from engaging. Leah Mclaren, who is a Canadian writer wrote the article Innocence Lost: What Did You Do Before the Internet? The article is a great example of questioning the internet. In this assignment, there will be an analysis of how Leah Mclaren’s style of writing is in the article, followed by the analysis of the use of contrast and other rhetorical devices.

The consequences of the attention economy will be discussed at the beginning of Leah Mclerens’s article "Innocence Lost ": What did you do before the internet? There's also Bjorn Nansen's video It’s People Like Us article, lines 84-94, where language dominates expository writing, as the main purpose is to inform and explain the extent to which the Internet has affected humans. The language is made up of long descriptive sentences with many adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, making it difficult to understand. A sentence consists of several clauses and different words. “By resigning ourselves to the frenetic distractions of attention economy (...) But strangely terrifying in practice” (s. 3, 84-96). The main claims are not directly mentioned due to language difficulties, but you will have to explain some of them yourself. Claiming to be indirect children does not create their own identity. The argumentation, Leah Mclaren applies is a wide range of ethos, where she is gaining credibility through other professionals. Leah Mclaren is also using Pathos, it can be seen where she is trying to persuade the audience by referring to guilt and shame. She frequently asks rhetorical questions to persuade and delicately gain confidence from the audience. This can be seen in the article “In this age of uncertainty, predictions have lost value, but here’s an irrefutable one: quite soon, no person on earth will remember what the world was like before the internet. There will be records, of course (stored in the intangibly limitless archive of the cloud), but the actual lived experience of what it was like to think and feel and be human before the emergence of big data will be gone. When that happens, what will be lost?” (s. 1, l. 12-16). She uses a metaphor to compare the generation she describes as her father, partly her own older generation, and then the digital generation who grew up with the internet as a learning tool. By using the opposite, she describes the digital generation with a lot of negative connotations. The effect of using negative connotations is that she gets the support of the readers because it is easier for them to surrender and take the same attitude towards the subject. The internet grabs our attention so we don't live in the moment. Our ability to exist is gone because you often need to check social media to see if anything is missing. Technological developments almost require you to be part of the digital age as society becomes more digital as well. The development of technology has led to the concept of the attention economy. An attention economy is an approach to information processing that treats human attention as a scarce commodity. In the video It's People Like Us, Bjorn Nansen means that attention equals money, and that's what companies want. This article backs this up with the ICO’s age-appropriate design code, an app for minors that will revolutionize the digital environment for children. Nansen believes that companies have been trying to grab people's attention for the longest time. This claim is backed up by McLaren, who believes that money is more important to individuals today than it was in the past. Back then, people liked presence, and contrary to today's generation, they wanted a device where they could be online with their friends. She means the internet is a bad thing. This is seen in this quote “Which would you rather be, extremely poor with loads of friends or super rich with no friends at all? “(...)and hang out with people online” (s.2, l.54-58)

Nansen argues against this in the video, saying that the internet is such a powerful networking device that it allows us to keep in touch with each other. However, he thinks it's going too far and needs to work on behalf of people to stop using their mobile devices. On the one hand, the point of the article is that kids don't get bored, lonely, etc., and therefore don't find their identity because the phone keeps them from being in the moment. On the other hand, technology has taught people so many things that they have evolved into humans. They have learned that there is no one right way as a person that they always have the opportunity to talk to someone about their problems. Therefore, the attention economy has both advantages and disadvantages. The main purpose of this article is to inform and explain the extent to which the Internet has affected the human ability to exist. The text consists of long descriptive sentences that are difficult to understand. The argument is weak because the arguments are inconsistent. McLaren uses spirit and pathos to persuade recipients. What she means is that our ability to exist is gone because you need to constantly check social media to see if you're missing something. Bjorn Nansen backs McLaren's argument. He believes attention equals money, and that's what companies want. Even though the internet is such a powerful network device, he means people are addicted to their phones and support McLaren because it's a problem. McLaren believes that a new generation will find it harder to establish their own identity because of the influence of mobile phones. As said in the first place, this is a well-discussed topic with pros and cons, and it's a topic you can never conclude about. The next time you get a notification, put your phone on silent so it doesn't stop you from immersing at the moment.