The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource

 
　　美國有線新聞頻道MSNBC主持人克里斯‧海斯（Chris Hayes）以寬廣的視角，探討當代科技與企業，如何將人們的專注力產品化／資本主義化，分析各種行動裝置帶動的商業模式，正如何處心積慮地攻佔每個人的心智與心靈，誘使大眾對不必要的推播內容上癮，變得難以專注、容易分心。
 
　　我們每天都會在街上撞見低頭滑手機、彷彿開啟自動導航模式般行走的「殭屍」們──有時我們自己就是其中的一員。每當看見餐廳裡同桌用餐的人們，同時安靜地低頭查看手機，我們也都能感受到這個景象的荒謬，然而我們也經常做出相同行為。在人類歷史的多數時期，個人生活中公與私的界線是明確的，至少理論上如此。然而大型科技公司推出的產品，在短短十年內，就徹底消除了這個分野。社交平台、遊戲公司的應用程式，牢牢抓緊人們的注意力，媒體大量使用刺激的標題來吸引目光，智慧型手機和網際網路每天不斷把更新的內容，送到你我手中。
 
　　那些在市場上最有價值的科技公司，建立起的龐大帝國，正在收割你我的專注力！在這樣的生活環境下，我們真的難以保持專注。注意力成為商品化的資源，企業挖空心思從你我身上榨取每一分專注力，從中獲利，這改變了人與人間的溝通模式，反倒使人們彼此間變得更為疏離，更可怕的是會長期破壞我們的大腦神經結構，剝奪人類長久以來的演化優勢。
 
　　作者大膽建議政府透過立法的方式，針對「注意力市場」實施監管措施，矽谷的遊說大軍，或許會對此提出猛烈反擊。個人還能如何扭轉被控制、剝削的現況，重新找回對自己的掌控權和專注力？這本書將帶領我們努力集中精神，深刻反思。(文/博客來編譯)
 
書籍評論：
 
　　●「作者廣泛涉略哲學、媒體理論、心理學及文學經典，提出注意力為何是生存中必備的力量，是一種被視為『溪流中的黃金，岩石中的石油』的珍稀資源……這本書既能引起共鳴，又充滿趣味…對注意力經濟的現況，提出精明的反思。」——《出版人週刊》（Publishers Weekly）
 
　　●「這是一部高明、具建設性的書作，指出把專注力轉化為具金錢經濟價值的轉變過程，如何徹底改變了新聞、政治、休閒娛樂，人們之間的互動交流，呈現『崩壞狀態』……深刻、具前瞻性的分析，試圖幫助讀者找回內心的寧靜。」——《柯克斯書評》（Kirkus Reviews）

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

From the New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society

＂An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics.＂ --New York Times

＂Brilliant book... Reading it has made me change the way I work and think.＂ --Rachel Maddow

We all feel it--the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, ＂With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.＂ Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition whose only parallel is what happened to labor in the nineteenth century: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. The Sirens’ Call is the big-picture vision we urgently need to offer clarity and guidance.

Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. As Hayes writes, ＂Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances, and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human.＂ The Sirens’ Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic framework so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.

Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award-winning host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and the New York Times bestselling author of A Colony in a Nation and Twilight of the Elites. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children.