SHADOW DANCE
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DAILY PHOTO: Arabia Mountain
PROMPT: Feel Bad
Daily writing prompt
What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?
Kindle Reader. Do people engage in habitual activities that they feel bad about? I understand the occasional excessive pile of ice cream or hedonistic cheeseburger, but continually doing something one feels bad about seems self-rectifying.
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Bolete [Haiku]
soggy forest floor:
bolete stands in the mulch
with crimson cap.
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BOOK: “The Attention Merchants” by Tim Wu
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim WuMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site — Penguin
This book explores the evolution of capturing attention for commercial purposes. It delves into the history of attention economics from the development of print ads to the pursuit of virality via the internet and social media. Wu outlines how different media (e.g. print, radio, television, cable tv, and the internet) learned different lessons about how to make advertising work given the unique nature of each platform. The book also offers insight into how advertising spawned a market for people’s personal consumer information as the internet era began to allow companies to target ads for maximum effect, rather than using the scattershot approach that was all that was available to radio and broadcast television.
I found this book to be informative and it’s a subject of which people should be aware. William James famously said, “…what we attend to is reality.” If James was right, our reality is being shaped by forces that often remain outside our awareness. If you are curious about the attention economy, this is a highly readable overview of the subject.
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Fabulist
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DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Yun Lai Viewpoint
PROMPT: Inspired
I would say it’s much more common for travel to inspire me to read a particular book than the other way about. I can’t think of a case in which reading a book was the prime mover in a decision to travel to a given place. But I do try to read some literature from every country or literarily active city that I visit.
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DAILY PHOTO: Boats in Ao Ton Sai, Koh Phi Phi
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PROMPT: Erase
I’ll preface my comment by saying this kind of thinking is fraught with peril. The law of unintended consequences makes knowing whether one’s counterfactual would produce the intended results impossible.
For example, in the US (and some other countries of the developed world,) there has been a proclivity to run up massive debt — both budget and trade. In the US, servicing debt has passed defense spending and (given current trends) will surpass entitlements to become the largest component of the Federal deficit. I am among those who think this will probably end catastrophically, given the complete lack of effort to correct the situation. (Jaw-jacking and firing civil servants whose salaries make up a pittance in comparison to interest payments — while building yet more debt-inducing budgets — has [unsurprisingly] not proved useful.)
So, this is definitely a trend I wish didn’t exist, but almost certainly the American and world economies would not be as well off to date as they are had this trend been kept in check, and it’s possible something might be figured out that allows a softer landing than I presently expect. The old man lost his horse. Good news? Bad news? Who’s to say?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 