Why The Fracked Attention of Algorithms Will Doom Us

When used sincerely and not dismissively, the word “interesting” functions as a conversational heat sink. It gathers up the disorganized emotional warmth of the speaker’s desire to explore, discuss, share and understand a subject and packs it into a cool, metallic rhetorical box so that they can continue moving along the conversational circuit. When you listen to people who are interested in what’s interesting, like Ezra Klein and Malcolm Gladwell, you can play a drinking game based on that one word. But I’m not sure they know how much they use it or how crucial it is to their conversational circuit design.


I had a beer while listening to this episode of Gladwell’s Revisionist History (https://lnkd.in/esMuAQ2W) on the appeal of country music in which he identifies two qualities that make it interesting (i.e. worth thinking about even if you don’t like it) and that I think are two of the five main signifiers of interestingness in general: negative affect and concrete detail.

Ezra Klein has long been circling the idea of interestingness without directly identifying his quarry. When investigating attention, as he does here (https://lnkd.in/e3fdtXtt), he hits on a number of issues and apparent conflicts that are solved, finessed or at least, positively addressed, by the idea of interestingness. Good vs. Bad advertising. The goal of education.  Books vs. smartphones. Contemplative vs. fractured attention. Humanist vs. market values. Those “long webs of connectedness” that your guest is talking about? That’s pattern building and that’s what interestingness is about. Attention that is fracked, fractured and filleted by algorithms cannot build patterns to connect the world and without that capability, we’re doomed to…well, we’re just doomed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the Dove-Nike Collaboration Interesting?

Image
This collaboration makes sense, but is it interesting? It has signs of interestingness: when we see something that we appraise as likely to be interesting: Both Dove and Nike have done interesting things in the past and, while not always true, interesting x interesting usually equals interesting. And both have established a pattern of marketing that aims to empower girls/women. So teaming up on an important social mission, using sports participation to build confidence in girls, reinforces both brand patterns. And if this is as deep as the causal viewer goes into this collaboration, the appraisal is likely to be: "That's great! Good on both of these brands for doing something positive in the world." But there is more to being interesting than just the signs. The signs of being interesting alone have less of a chance of creating long-term memories and mental availability than a deeper level of thought generates. Finding something 'interesting' is also an assessme...
Read more

Creative Efficiency Overlooked, Again

Image
In May, Gartner released their CMO survey results, revealing a significant reduction in average marketing budgets for 2024. Budgets have decreased by 15%, now constituting a mere 7.7% of overall company revenues. In response, CMOs are reallocating resources in an era of scarcity, and many believe that AI will come to the rescue delivering increased efficiency. This echoes previous thinking touting digital channels as the solution for efficiency, despite ample evidence suggesting otherwise. Amidst discussions on budget reallocations, there is a glaring omission: investing in higher-quality creative. It's surprising that the creative aspect remains overlooked in driving efficiency, especially years after Binet & Field demonstrated that award-winning creative is 11+ times more efficient than non-award-winning creative. High-quality creative is the most efficient investment a marketer can make to enhance the impact of their ad budget, yet its value is consistently neglected. Advert...
Read more

I guess this proves the 'what gets measured gets managed' quote.

Image
Ian Gibbs Ian Gibbs • Following • Following The DMA, JICMAIL and PAMCo - Data and Insight Director / Technical Consultant The DMA, JICMAIL and PAMCo - Data and Insight Director / Technical Consultant 1w • Edited • 1 week ago 1. Performance marketing effectiveness declined for the third year running in 2023. 2. Sub-standard measurement of short-term activity was a key contributing factor. 3. 38% of the metrics being used to measure results are less meaningful campaign delivery and digital vanity metrics as opposed to meaningful business, brand and response effects. 4. Campaigns which avoid focusing on less meaningful campaign delivery effects record a 67% uplift in business effects on average. 5. Those who invest in best practice measurement (such as MMM, MTA, brand measurement and incrementality tests) generate 42% more effects on average. 6. Best practice measurement is linked to a culture of effectiveness and drives future campaign performance through shar...
Read more