The Attention Deficit

Unintended Consequences of Digital Connectivity

Swati Bhatt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030218485
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Digital technology has enabled connectivity on an unimagined scale. Human beings are social animals and economic activity promotes this socialization. Market transactions are based on optimism about the future, faith that the world is good and trust that growth is organic or coming from within the system. Individuals therefore invest in the future by having children, by extending credit and accepting risk, and by building connections with others in the sincere expectation of this connectivity being reciprocated.

This book explores the unintended consequences of ubiquitous connectivity. The first effect is captured by the sharing model. Technology offers multiple avenues for sharing experiences and personal information, so active engagement with this increased content uses mental effort. Connection inevitably leads to comparisons with other groups and individuals, so despite the benefits of affirmation and group inclusion, these links corrode social networks, leading to depression and mental apathy. The second effect--the result of the commercialization of sharing--is encapsulated in the attention deficit model. Loss of self-worth, driven by the first effect, encourages further connectivity and sharing as buyers seek more comfort and reassurance via social media, paying with time and personal information. The product is digital content and the payment is with time and data. Correspondingly, social media fulfills this demand with exuberance, both via user-generated content and commercially curated content. We are overwhelmed with even more information, paying with increasingly scarce time and attention. Finally, the third and most consequential effect is diminished risk taking. Attention scarcity, as a consequence of the content tsunami, throttles cognitive effort, impairing judgment and decision-making. So the safe bet may be to do nothing... take no risks and no gambles.

Weaving together the latest research on economics, psychology, andneuroscience, this book fills a void for readers wanting a smart, clear analysis of communications markets and the commercialization of Internet-inspired connectivity.

© The Author(s) 2019

S. BhattThe Attention Deficithttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21848-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Connectivity, Attention and Risk

Swati Bhatt¹

(1)

Department of Economics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Swati Bhatt

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

On a cold January weekend in 2019, at a conference at Princeton University, a recently matriculated physics undergraduate appeared fascinated by entrepreneurial possibilities. The conference was on emerging risks, opportunities and governance of artificial intelligence in environmental and agricultural applications. The undergraduate had developed an algorithm, in the emerging field of agritech, to optimize water use in drought-prone areas. His idea was to power small, lightweight drones with moisture-sensing ability for watering agricultural land. However, he had been derailed by job obligations and, importantly, what he called “life’s distractions.” What had held him back? Mental overload or mental laziness? Was mental overload due to a content tsunami, generated by ubiquitous connectivity, or was mental laziness engendered by loss of autonomy due to devices and software? How was this young undergraduate a beneficiary of digital information and communication technology; a technology that spawned deep connectivity, communication and machine-enabled prediction and thinking? Why was it difficult to translate technology into action?

Humans care about control and autonomy over their lives. This is the idea behind free will and the maximization of utility. Consequently, the business model is based on trading data for free and personalized products and services. But individuals also care about acknowledgment and legitimacy in who they are and what they do. Therefore, when self-revelation provides esteem and a sense of personal identity, individuals voluntarily share personal data.

This sharing model leads to a content tsunami. The capacity to comprehend is overwhelmed by this exorbitant demand for cognitive faculties and the outcome is the attention deficit. Human faculties were physically imprinted at least 50,000 years ago in the Big Bang of Human Consciousness , so our ability to attend to information is a scarce resource.¹ The process of applying filters and sorting through this tsunami further strains cognitive capacity. A resource deficit arises when the demand for attention exceeds this scarce supply.

Furthermore, artificial intelligence incorporated in devices automates day-to-day decisions by algorithms that organize information and make predictions and recommendations. Ceding agency to code shrinks available mental effort and weakens the capacity to adequately filter information, promoting mental atrophy. An overwhelming demand for attention combined with a weakened filtering capacity and scarce cognitive bandwidth has spawned a mental framework of cognitive apathy that does not support a wider vision of responsibility and risk-taking.²

Fear, mistrust and risk aversion are pervasive. Technologies that threaten our worldview and lifestyles by requiring adaptation and adjustment are faced with resistance. Widespread apathy is the response, and in the context of an increase in demand for our attention, there is impaired judgment and loss of decision-making skills.

The young man introduced earlier in this chapter was overwhelmed with distracting information. Having helped his friend launch a successful fitness application, he was anxious about keeping in touch with academic research that would impact his fledging idea and so he attended conferences, read voraciously and networked on all fronts. Amidst concern about his father’s uneasy financial situation and anxious about geopolitical uncertainty, he had caved into a sense of fearfulness and insecurity about his own future. In other words, he had decided to “wait it out.”

The reality is consistent with such anecdotes. About a third of college students reported feelings of overwhelming anxiety and over two-thirds felt overwhelmed by their responsibilities in 2018 (American College Health Association Survey 2018. There is a drag on economic dynamism as seen in a startup deficit and decline in seed funding; a rise in economic behemoths; cultural nostalgia and a reduction of civic awareness. Let me explain in terms of four forces, four facts and four aspects of the sharing model.

Four Forces

The first of the four forces unleashed by information and communications technology (ICT) is connectivity.³ Connectivity between individuals allows sharing, the transfer of information between individuals seamlessly and at nearly zero cost. Connections are being made and reinforced across the human network on an unimagined scale and information is being shared with abandon.

Second, the resulting content tsunami has led to an exorbitant demand for attention, defined as cognitive bandwidth hours available for mental effort. Filtering the vast quantity of information imposes additional demands upon mental faculties. The tsunami of content, while contributing to an attention deficit, has another perverse outcome. Sharing information opens the door to comparisons and judgment, where fear, anxiety and mistrust dominate. Retreating behind the rhetoric of privacy, the second unanticipated consequence is tribal thinking. We observe prejudice, narcissism, isolation and solitary consumption. Such an environment is inimical to risk-taking. Paradoxically, sharing itself connotes a transparent, trusting landscape where bold ideas can be confidently explored.

Artificial intelligence, which is connectivity between humans and machines, has liberated us from the inconvenience and decision-making involved with daily, mundane tasks. Recommendation algorithms simplify decision-making. When, for example, Waze maps out a route from point A to point B, we are relieved from the mental effort of both remembering and optimizing details of the route. Fitness apps have trainer-led programs that combine workouts with close monitoring of our sleep/wake cycles, our nutrition and diet schedules and our calendar of activities so we no longer have to figure out how to structure our lives. We don’t even have to leave the familiar couch since Alexa, the device from Amazon, can decipher our tastes and implement our favorite entertainment. Paradoxically, the larger the content tsunami, the greater the reliance on algorithms to assist in processing this information. Effectively, this respite has shut down our mental faculties, shrinking the supply of cognitive bandwidth hours.

Third, juxtaposing the increase in demand for available cognitive hours with the reduced supply of hours, there is a net deficit of cognitive bandwidth hours or an attention deficit. Figure 1.1 illustrates individual desire for cognitive bandwidth increasing as a function of the content tsunami, and capacity or available bandwidth decreasing as content tsunami increases. The diminishing capacity is due to mental redundancy created by algorithmic outsourcing. When the tsunami is large, there arises an attention deficit as shown by the vertical blue line in the diagram. Demand for bandwidth exceeds the supply, and this deficit is magnified by increasing the tsunami from level 3 to level 5 or higher. Both desire and capacity for available cognitive bandwidth are monitored to a varying degree by individuals (see Chap. 6 for details). Define free will as agency in initiating and managing decisions to achieve desired outcomes and individual liberty as the freedom to execute these decisions. Then, the attention deficit suggests a loss of free will or consumer sovereignity as cognitive faculties are compromised, and we become incapable of simple decision-making.

Fig. 1.1

Attention deficit = deficit of cognitive bandwidth hours. (See Chap. 6 for details. Source: Author’s calculations)

Fourth, in the face of change, adaptation requires mental effort, whose scarcity leads to inaction. This is cognitive apathy. Adapting to a changing environment generated by new technologies demands resourcefulness and resilience. In the face of uncertainty, decision-making involves a creative assessment of outcomes and their probabilities, a specification of how resources can be matched to produce favorable payoffs, and an imagination capable of out-of-the-box thinking. Mental effort is required to assess new situations and when available cognitive capacity is compromised a budget-tightening mindset evolves.

Resistance to change and a reluctance to adapt is a way of conserving cognitive bandwidth. This is risk avoidance. Declining entrepreneurship, creativity and imaginative business ventures are economic consequences of resistance to change, while nostalgia and tribalism are the social outcomes. Since adaptation is a process requiring deliberation and cognitive processing, inadequate processing capacity compromises free will and manifests as cognitive apathy and risk avoidance. The central theme of this book is that the confluence of a content tsunami, artificial intelligence and attention deficit has the unintended consequence of diminished risk-taking.

Four Facts

Now consider the four facts. First, we are in the throes of climate uncertainty on a global scale. Long-term temperature response to greenhouse gas (carbon) emissions, called the carbon-climate response (CCR), depends upon the carbon sensitivity, the increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration from carbon emissions and climate sensitivity, which is the warming generated by a certain amount of carbon emissions (Brock and Hansen 2018).

Second, we are witnessing a rapid escalation of income and wealth inequality. Regardless of our attitudes toward equal opportunity, equal outcomes with regard to income distribution, level playing fields and fair rules of the game, we still need to have a dialogue about where...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Connectivity, Attention and Risk
• 2. Time: The Measure of Connectivity
• 3. The Psychology of Connectivity: Follower Counts and Identity
• 4. The Economics of Connectivity: Communication Markets
• 5. Streaming Technology and the Entertainment Industry
• 6. Content Tsunami and the Attention Deficit
• 7. Diminished Risk-Taking
• 8. Restoring Boldness and Reducing Apathy
• 9. Conclusion: Dialogue, Not Walls
• Back Matter