Attention
In the fall semester of 2026, I’ll be teaching a graduate course titled Rhetorics of Tomorrow: Algorithms, AI, and the Attention Economy. Here’s the (space-capped) blurb I wrote for the course:
In much the same way that algorithmic systems have encroached upon our cultures and social lives, artificial intelligence now ushers in an era of “post-literacy” (Marriott). This material and rhetorical transformation reflects a contemporary preoccupation with attention, that nebulous capacity that shapes both how we build the worlds around us and occupy them. We are, it is argued, entering an “attention economy.” As a discipline concerned at its roots with attention, rhetoric can help us map and navigate seismic shifts in public deliberation, knowledge production and circulation, information access and discovery, identity formation, and democratic participation. We will read broadly but selectively, with an eye towards exploring and articulating an ambitious set of questions about the future(s) of rhetoric.
I’m planning on spending part of my time this summer collecting resources and doing a little pre-reading for the course, as I decide exactly what to include for the syllabus. I thought I’d do this semi-publicly, so that others might avail themselves of my research (and notes).
A couple of quick caveats: first, I don’t always do this, but I plan on grounding this course in a particular hypothesis, not because I expect my students to “fall in line,” but so that we have an initial framework to contextualize our reading. Second, the resources below shouldn’t be interpreted as endorsements one way or the other. I’m much more of a “teach the conflicts” person, especially with graduate study. Finally, if there’s something you think I’m missing, I assure you that it’s not intentional on my part. Please feel free to share things that you’d like to see on these lists.
Resources
I may add some clusters (or alternate forms or organization) eventually, but for the moment, the only distinction I’m making is among longform (books), shortform (chapters, essays, blogposts), and video.
Longform
Jonathan Beller (2006). The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle.
Yves Citton (2014). The Ecology of Attention.
Jonathan Crary (1991). Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture.
Guy DeBord (1967). The Society of the Spectacle.
The Friends of Attention (2026). Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement.
Byung-Chul Han (2010). The Burnout Society. [Han belongs on this list, but I’m not sure which of his books are best here. Could also be Infocracy or Psychopolitics.]
Chris Hayes (2025). The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.
Tim Hwang (2020). Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.
Richard Lanham (2006). The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information.
Iain McGilchrist (2016). Ways of Attending: How our Divided Brain Constructs the World.1
Alexandra Horowitz (2013). On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes.
Safiya Umoja Noble (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.
Jenny Odell (2019). How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.
Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (2022). The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil.
Simone Weil (1947). Gravity and Grace.
James Williams (2018). Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. [open access]
Tim Wu (2016). The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.
Shortform
Tom Chatfield (2013). “The Attention Economy.” [Aeon]
Georg Franck (2018). “The Economy of Attention.” [PDF]
The Friends of Attention (2019). “Twelve Theses on Attention.” [Strother]
Michael Goldhaber (1997). “The Attention Economy and the Net.” [First Monday]
William James (1890). “Chapter XI: Attention” from The Principles of Psychology. [HTML]
Hera Hyeonseo Lee (2026). “Brain Rot and the Financialization of Attention: Cognitive Decomposition as Systemic Externality of Platform Capitalism” (pre-print)
Kathryn Lawson (2026). “Simone Weil, the attention economy, and the annihilation of autonomy.” [iai.tv]
Kate Lindsay (2025). “You might just have to be bored…” [Substack]
Rai Hasen Masoud (2025). “The Attention Economy and the Collapse of Cognitive Autonomy.” [HTML]
Jac Mullen (2025). “How to Do Soul-Craft with State Tools.” [Substack] [several other posts worth exploring]
John Rouse (1990). “The Economy of Attention.” [JStor]
Herbert Simon (1971)2. “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World.” [HTML] [PDF]
Video
I didn’t learn until after spending full-book price for Ways of Attending that it was roughly 30 pages that excerpts and synthesizes the places in The Master and His Emissary where McGilchrist discusses attention. It was not unlike spending $15 to watch a trailer for a movie that you’ve seen recently, even if this pamphlet is a helpful gloss on one element of a much larger work.
Widely acknowledged as the essay that “invented” the idea of an attention economy.