Attention: Where do you put it?

• April 18, 2006
• James Skemp
• philosophy, Internet

In some way, I found AttentionTrust.org. Basically, AttentionTrust operates under the principle that your attention is both yours, and of worth.

What really brought me in has an article on Attention as a Backup Identity. Reading this, I'm struck by a number of things.

1) Web 2.0 advocates are a lot like philosophers - they both can reference science fiction as the future. There are, from what I've seen, no groups of individuals online that reference science fiction more. Of course, the Internet is extremely connected with science fiction, in that it allows the almost instantaneous sharing of information.

2) "That which we own ends up owning us." All too often, especially with the youth, but certainly not limited to them, there's a problem with the connection between their Internet personality and their real personality. MySpace is a great example, where not only do you live in a community, you can die into one as well.

"As we establish multiple online identities and avatars, we increasingly run the risk of suffering a catastrophic loss of identity."

Errr ... kinda, depending upon how we read this.

The only loss of identity we have is that we're creating multiple identities online, and often a different personality online. Like some games, we become so focused on who are in relation to the game, or within the game, that we are no longer anything outside of the game. In short, remove that which we have connected, or focused, upon, and we cannot determine what we are anymore.

We exist not only as a part of the communities we are a part of, but individually outside of them. It's important to remember this. Just because an online community disappears, doesn't necessarily mean that I disappear. Likewise, just because you leave a community, doesn't necessarily mean that the community disappears.

Anyways, I downloaded the Attention Recorder extension for Firefox, and signed up at Root Vaults to host my data. However, I've yet to find any information on when this data is uploaded ...

Anyways, once again, it sounds both interesting and promising. More on this as things progress.

• firefox
• web 2.0