This lecture is about the ethical aspects of the attention market. Don't know what that means, learn about this market in this first video:
What makes attention so valuable?
In the first part of the lecture, we learned about how to think of facebook, google and other companies as attention merchants. They sell our attention to advertisers. But why do the advertisers pay so much money to have our attention. What makes our attention so valuable? In this video, I discuss two conceptions, one defended by James Willams, and one that I myself favor. Learn about both of them:
Some forms of critique
In the next part of the lecture, I will distinguish several forms of critique of the attention economy. Maybe you have heard about some of them?
Is Mindfulness the Solution?
An approach that has been much discussed is mindfulness training. Learn why I think this is not the way to go here:
The first moral problem: manipulation
Now we get to two ethical problems with the modern attention economy. The first is the charge that this economy is manipulative. Why is that? Find out about it:
The second moral problem: democracy and what should not be for sale
We now come to the second problem. Arguably, attention is not the kind of thing that should be for sale at all? Hear me discuss why one might think that: