Attention

Attention determines what your consciousness experiences, since you can only focus on a single thing at a once. Your subjective experience follows your attention from one thing to the next. That attention is commanded by your biological drives, which determine the salience of different objects in the environment. Increasingly, attention is being commanded by the forces of capitalism which seeks to monetize it.

The information and social media economy runs on attention. Gamified algorithms use artificial intelligence to figure out exactly what will keep your attention the longest, and eventually lead to addiction.

Why We Can’t Focus - with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes