Interaction design and user experience, advanced neuroimaging technology, and modern psycho-stimulants are just three contemporary examples of the dispersed complex of knowledge and systems that contribute to what is known as the “attention economy,” the way in which human attention has introduced itself into all aspects social and political life. Attention has become an essential part of practices of consumption, leisure, labor, pedagogy, medicine, psychology, and, of course, media culture. We are currently in an age where attention itself has become intensely valued both as capital and commodity; it is monitored and managed with increased precision and diversification of techniques across all aspects of the social body: it can be observed as technique in the intellectual, service, and industrial sectors of the global economy; in new medical diagnoses, categorizations, and pharmaceutical treatments; and in changing forms of media connectivity and convergence.
This four session course will unpack how the issue of attention has gained currency within a wide array of institutional and cultural practices which are largely a consequence of the way in which biopolitical formations of internalized self-regulation have become vital to the survival of the 30-year turn to global neoliberalism. Dispersed, heterogeneous, de-regulated, de-governmentalized forms capitalization demand new and diversified kinds of self-regulating attentive subjects. The course will move back in time and develop a genealogical study of how the technological management of attention developed into an essential aspect of our current neoliberalist market logic invested in new forms of biopolitical production. The line of genealogical development will unexpectedly begin at the emergence of techniques of localization in the second half of the nineteenth century, which ran parallel to the rise of classical liberalism or the “gilded age” of capitalism. Localization became a defining empirical quest for understanding the physiological operations of the brain according to the “structure-function” dyad, first implemented in the biological sciences and later migrating to other late nineteenth century disciplinary and extra-disciplinary formations of knowledge. The course will then follow this genealogical thread of localization through early twentieth century automation economies, post-war information economies, and conclude with our own late twentieth/early twenty-first century bioeconomies. A parallel thread of emphasis within this genealogical development will detail the impact and effect of media technology upon these rising biopolitical formations to assess their direct participation in the attention economy, concerning itself primarily with the telegraph and telephone, the cinema, television, and finally the Internet and digital communication technologies. Finally, as ballast to this relentless focus on attention, the course will look at its counterproductive other side, boredom, as a resistant and unassimilable aspect to the sustained diversification of techniques of attention. It will explore how boredom becomes viewed—at particular historical moments and within certain disciplines such as pedagogy, social-psychology, and neuroscience—as a malady and a pernicious threat to the “productive” forces of civilization. Conversely, I will look at how another tradition of boredom in art and alternative media culture becomes celebrated as a communal, inter-subjective wellspring of creativity that eludes capital and becomes understood as a source of creative counter-knowledge. The interest here is not to advocate either of these positions, but to simply point to boredom’s inversed isomorphic development to the attention economy.
- Dates
- October 24, 2009 at 12:00pm
October 31, 2009 at 12:00pm
November 7, 2009 at 12:00pm - Location
- The Public School
- Facilitator
- Kenneth Rogers
- Limit
- 15
- Fee
- $15 (or $5 per session)
- Other information
Comment
I'm totally into a study like this, and I've done a decent amount of research along these lines. Jonathon Crary is one key resource; and Kittler; William James is interesting on attention; then there's a whole slew of contemporary neuroscience and cognitive science stuff on attention--you have to sift through it to draw cultural and political consequences but that's interesting. Also midway through the 20th c. there's behaviorism, and then cognitive psychology develops straight out of wwii problems of attention in military situations--jets, communications decks on ships. That's what leads to all the dominant contemporary neurosci/cog psy literature (e.g. Donald Broadbent...) Then it sounds like the idea would be to connect this sort of thing with Foucault/Negri/Hardt sort of stuff. Anyway, I could teach some aspects of a course like this, but from the suggestion it sounds like Caleb has clear ideas, so I wonder why the course read "needs a teacher..."
I look forward to getting something together here. I've not been to the public school and want to become acquainted. Maybe it's better to start as a participant instead of a teacher...
Matt
6 Aug 2009 12:07PM
Hi Matt,
Actually there is a teacher lined up for this, Kenneth Rogers. Its just not showing up for some reason. This is his proposal, not mine. He won't be able to do this class until October but I thought it would be good to post. It would be nice to have a conversation here though beforehand to share links and texts we come across.
Thanks,
Caleb
6 Aug 2009 12:17PM
Okay, that's great. I'd like to be involved.
Matt
6 Aug 2009 12:41PM
Hey, Ken Rogers here. Yes obviously Kittler and Crary are two key early studies on the question of attention. Jonnathan Crary’s Suspensions of Perception and a myriad of studies in the fields of Pre-cinema and Early Cinema (Gunning, Charney, Schwartz) are important precursors to this course and do inform the genealogical methodology I was thinking of to some degree. At the same time, however, I also feel these studies are somewhat limited to the treatment of attention as something primarily contained within models perception and that they are also are too narrowly affixed to the disciplinary master-narratives of Art History (Crary, et al.) and Cinema Studies (Gunning, Charney & Schwartz, et al.). It seems like it is time to update the conversation to include many of the topics and sources Matt mentions as well as include more a more current historical periodization, thus developing analyses of more recent phenomena: information economies, psychopharmacology, and biomedia, for example. And yes you are right the idea here is to link Foucault/Hardt-Negri/Agamben biopolitics to the lit on attention.
Matt: I proposed the course, but I know you expressed an interest in teaching it as well and seem to have a lot of interesting thoughts on the subject; I would be more than willing to co-run it if you would like. We could share resources and start an online forum to get the ball rolling. Caleb has sent me a bunch of interesting stuff on interaction design, for example. I have a lot of good 19th century and early 20th century material in PDF form. Plenty of stuff in Television Studies worth looking at also that I know I have lying around somewhere too. Seems like you know a bit about behaviorism and cognitive psychology and their mid-century military application. Perhaps we could pool resources and produce a conversation and bibliography leading up to the seminar.
Thoughts on that?
Best,
Ken
7 Aug 2009 12:26AM
Hey, Ken Rogers here. Yes obviously Kittler and Crary are two key early studies on the question of attention. Jonnathan Crary’s Suspensions of Perception and a myriad of studies in the fields of Pre-cinema and Early Cinema (Gunning, Charney, Schwartz) are important precursors to this course and do inform the genealogical methodology I was thinking of to some degree. At the same time, however, I also feel these studies are somewhat limited to the treatment of attention as something primarily contained within models perception and that they are also are too narrowly affixed to the disciplinary master-narratives of Art History (Crary, et al.) and Cinema Studies (Gunning, Charney & Schwartz, et al.). It seems like it is time to update the conversation to include many of the topics and sources Matt mentions as well as include more a more current historical periodization, thus developing analyses of more recent phenomena: information economies, psychopharmacology, and biomedia, for example. And yes you are right the idea here is to link Foucault/Hardt-Negri/Agamben biopolitics to the lit on attention.
Matt: I proposed the course, but I know you expressed an interest in teaching it as well and seem to have a lot of interesting thoughts on the subject; I would be more than willing to co-run it if you would like. We could share resources and start an online forum to get the ball rolling. Caleb has sent me a bunch of interesting stuff on interaction design, for example. I have a lot of good 19th century and early 20th century material in PDF form. Plenty of stuff in Television Studies worth looking at also that I know I have lying around somewhere too. Seems like you know a bit about behaviorism and cognitive psychology and their mid-century military application. Perhaps we could pool resources and produce a conversation and bibliography leading up to the seminar.
Thoughts on that?
Best,
Ken
7 Aug 2009 12:26AM
Hi Ken,
No need necessarily for me to jump in on teaching, I'm perfectly happy just to participate. Although if you'd like I could probably put together one session on cognitive psychology and its military and industrial relations. A lot of what I know about that came straight from the "Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit" (!) 's own website. http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/history/ . We could trace that history and try to synthesize some of the dominant paradigms in neuroscience/cog psy models. All the anthologies I've looked at trace the interest in attention back to William James and/or Helmholtz. Then, goes the standard story, attention as an "interior" phenomenon got rejected as scientific material by behaviorism, then it reappeared when there were too many dials and too much noise for controllers of various machines during wwii.
There's also another interesting line from James. He corresponded a lot with Bergson, who influenced of course Husserl as well as Italians like Sorel; Husserl to Heidegger--in Heidegger an interesting shift from "closed" to ideas about "open" attention, and then a weird uptake of Heidegger and "open attention" in Japan, by kind of Buddhist-Heideggerian nationalists (I think--haven't read this latter yet) like Nishitani.
What I don't know much about but would like to is the psychopharm lineage. There's even a connection there to James, who was very experimental, and to this same military lineage, since amphetamines were a near-ubiquitous wwii military phenomenon (Britain's airforce, the Luftwaffe, Japanese factories)...
It's probably also not too much of a stretch to connect this sort of chemical-behavioral-industrial training in attention to other chemical-behavioral-technical modulations of state as for example detailed by Naomi Klein at the beginning of the Shock Doctrine... (what do they call those now? extended interrogation techniques?)
Matt
7 Aug 2009 12:56PM
Hi all:
Matt: I think things are always more productive if there is collaboration. I would more than welcome it if you would offer to run one session on cognitive psych and military industrial relations, as it sounds like an extremely fruitful line of exploration. Helmholtz and James lines to cog psych and neuroscience is a fascinating way to go. I have not looked extensively at the idea of a James/Bergson link that leads into phenomenology, but this is also very interesting. I imagine Crary touches on this. Helmholtz is also relevant to experimental sensory-motor physiology and Association Psychology: folks like Flourens, Muller, Magendie, Bell, Bain, and later people like Hughlings-Jackson, Fritsch and Hitzig, Ferrier, Duchenne Du Bologne, but also proto-Freudians such as Charcot. As you know I am interested in more closely coupling this line with parallel developments in political economy, so it is interesting to note that all of the Association Psychologists have a direct link to Utilitarianism, in people such as Bentham, James Mill, J.S. Mill, Hume, as well as Social Darwinism in Spencer--the political and economic implications of which we know all too well.
For early twentieth century political econ., I’m interested in maybe bringing Durkheim and Simmel into a discussion of the psy-complex, also might be useful to parse through some technical manuals on scientific management that involve the Taylorist and Fordist deskilling of laborers by reorganizing their attentive faculties.
The logical parallel to your take on cog psych in the military industrial complex would be to look at its similar application in the private sphere with new information economies since the height of the military industrial complex coincides with the rise of modern consumerism, television culture and new forms of spectatorship, advertising, and the scientific study of consumer behavior. Adam Curtis’ take of the Freudian influence upon Edward Bernays in “The Century of Self” comes to mind here.
On the psychopharm issue, I don't know a great deal outside of a general journalistic/pop understanding of the area, trying to learn more about this. I know this guy named Bob Spunt, a neuro-scientist doing a UCLA postdoc, whose research deals with imaging “base brain states” that have a a direct relationship to the areas of boredom and attention. I’ll see if he might be interested in contributing to a final session on contemporary neuroscience and psychopharmacology, or at least giving us a good sense of the relevant research.
Let’s begin by amassing a bib. Caleb: any suggestions where we might start to post content to collect a potential bibliography? Does The Public School usually use aaaarg.org, or is there another service you tend to you use?
--k
8 Aug 2009 8:42PM
Okay, that sounds good to me. I'll do one session along these lines. I don't know the list of association psychologists you give, so that'll be interesting to learn. It would be nice to hear what sources your neuroscientist acquaintance recommends. Also Fordist and Taylorist tech manuals would be intriguing, and I've been reading some Georg Simmel. What text(s) did you have in mind there? I wonder if there's something from Siegfried Kracauer...
As for my sources the start would be William James' Psychology. I see all these nice complete pdfs posted on aaaarg--any suggestions where else to find such things?
Matt
9 Aug 2009 9:54AM
Hi everyone,
We should definitely use AAAARG for uploading/sharing PDFs. Ken, if you login to AAAARG, you can setup an "issue" that will collect everything: http://a.aaaarg.org/issues. After it is setup on AAAARG I'll associate this class with that issue and all the readings will show up here. Additionally, if people have non-pdf stuff they want to share - links, images, videos - you can use the note feature that is on the class tools above. This is more of a blogging system and should be used instead of the comments as it lets you embed media and links.
-caleb
9 Aug 2009 1:30PM
For Simmel readings I was thinking of is Metropolis and Mental Life, as well as The Philosophy of Money (excerpts of course). Kracauer does have relevant stuff in The Mass Ornament, Good suggestion. The essay on distraction comes to mind. I think I may have copy of that to upload.
I started a topic called attention on aaaarg, http://a.aaaarg.org/issue/3556/attention so anyone can start uploading relevant material as they think of it, and then in a little while perhaps craft a reading list.
On finding PDFs, if there is anything that looks relevant in a scholarly journal that requires a subscription, I can often get it through the UC affiliation since UC system is linked to Jstor and the like. So if there is an article you find on Google Scholar or somewhere else online but there is a subscriber service for PDF dowload, let me know and I'll see if I can't download it for free. Google Books is a very good service for older stuff that is the public domain. I highly recommend this for finding stuff like Wundt, Fechner, and Helmholtz. I see that Principles of Psychology is there, but I found what seems to be an unabridged web version that might be a little cleaner to work from and posted the link to the above note tool Caleb suggested. Let me know if that seems usable to you. On aaaarg.org I also posted James publication Psychology: Briefer Course, which has some revised and condensed passages on attention that he updated 13 years after Principles. Might be worth taking a look at that too. I'll keep you posted on the psychopharm stuff.
--Ken
9 Aug 2009 5:10PM
That James looks fine, although there are no page numbers to refer to. I should be able to collect some materials in the next week, which I'll upload. Any ideas about dates?
13 Aug 2009 2:43PM
hi there -
the class is certainly interesting for folks involved in media/content creation or anything internet related, but how academic would you all say it is? is it even worth participating if one isn't well versed in (e.g.) kittler and crary?
thanks -
13 Aug 2009 3:20PM
It sounds to me like Crary and Kittler, who both do historically-oriented critique of media, are more like background. Looking at things like management guides shouldn't require any prior knowledge... I'd personally prefer for the course to involve a lot of reading but not to be exclusively or fundamentally "academic."
15 Aug 2009 10:59AM
Alex and Matt: Yes, I agree that Crary and Kittler should be background reading but that we should focus on more primary sources (both academic and non-academic) and more recent scholarship. So, it will be helpful if you are familiar with someone like Crary, but definitely not essential. On the academic question, I certainly wouldn't say that the course will be exclusively and fundamentally academic. My background happens to be academic, and so it will most certainly inform aspects of my own approach, but I also feel that academic pursuits are most productive when they are placed in dialog with other forms of knowledge and practice. So I would more than welcome the inclusion of as many other perspectives in the seminar of people doing things like Internet content creation. I think the idea is not to review a absolutely fixed agenda of issues and topics. But to structure a series of interlocking conversations the outcome of which is forward thinking not totally defined; so it will be a richer discussion if we approach the issue from multiple vantage points that come from the different perspectives and backgrounds and areas of expertise of the participants. That said, I think it is important to spend time on reading texts and to have those texts in common as reference points, many of which will be academic, even if the approach is not exclusively so.
Matt: I have a hard copy of Psychology (briefer course) with page numbers that I can make a PDF of excerpts in September if you prefer.
Uploaded Simmel today.
--Ken
17 Aug 2009 2:27PM
I think the James we've got is fine. Too much work to make the pdf. I've just uploaded about twenty pdfs, many on advertising and attention, some on interface design, television etc. I'll do one more batch toward the end of the week including histories of cog psy/neuropsy theory, contemporary state of that theory, and a set of contemporary applied studies dealing with drivers of cars, pilots of aircraft, computer interfaces. Don't worry, my mad uploading will radically decelerate after that.
Matt
17 Aug 2009 3:28PM
Oh, I did see a couple of articles and a couple of books that might be interesting, but which I couldn't download. One is "Training Perceptual Skill by Orienting Visual Attention," by N. Hageman, in Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2006. The other articel is "Negative Video as Structure: Emotion, Attention, Capacity and Memory" by Annie Lang... in Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, v. 40, Issue 4, 1996, pp. 460-477.
There are three books that look intriguing, but I won't be back to the library for a while. Those are 1.The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business (2001). 2. Attraction, Distraction and Action: Multiple Perspectives on Attentional Capture (2001). 3. Attention, Attitude and Affect in Response to Advertising (1994).
Matt
17 Aug 2009 3:55PM
Anybody know why this and a couple of other proposed courses don't show up on the proposals list today?
17 Aug 2009 4:10PM
Thanks for uploading all that material, Matt. I'll try to take a look at it next week and maybe we can start to figure out what might be useful for discussion. I'll be uploading stuff in Sept after I return to Riverside where I can more easily convert stuff to PDF.
I've been on to some of those same books titles list. I'll try to get a hold of them and maybe see what looks relevant. Indeed, the articles you mention don't seem to be available for download. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media only has back issues dating up to 1997. But I looks like there might be a hard copy in the UC library system.
Under notes I posted a link to an article about attention, new media, and pedagogy by Bogen & Gordon.
21 Aug 2009 3:30PM
Hi everyone,
I want to put this class on the calendar for October and want to check everyone's schedule.
We are thinking that the first meeting would take place on October 17th from 12-2pm and then run every weekend for 3 or 4 weeks.
Does this conflict with anyone's schedule?
Thanks!
25 Aug 2009 10:02PM
fine by me.
Matt
25 Aug 2009 11:22PM
Could we push it one weekend to the 24th of October? I have to be at a wedding on the 17th... if not, it's cool.
26 Aug 2009 12:15PM
I'm away at a conference weekend of Sat Nov 14, so if we were to start on Oct 24 it would have to be a 3 wk. class. --Ken
27 Aug 2009 6:21PM
Uploaded some new stuff today. A lot of late 19th/early 20th century texts on attention ca. James' Psychology. See: Herbart, Hughes, Hylan, Pillsbury, Ribot, Uhl. Some are on psychology and perception, others are general lit reviews, others still on pedagogy. These are mostly complete books, so obviously we won't want to read them all, but rather select relevant excerpts where they exist. Also uploaded a few more contemporary texts Gunning on early cinema, Benjamin on Boredom, Huber on Dan Graham.
BTW, Matt, the text you uploaded under the name Laurent Itti is actually a duplicate of the Fletcher article.
I love having as much stuff on aaaarg.org as possible, great to develop a resource like this, so I will continue to post more in weeks to come; however, obviously at some point we'll have to make this list of texts manageable. Maybe sometime in, say, late Sept. we could begin to discuss what the reading list should be.
--Ken
30 Aug 2009 7:11PM
The class has been scheduled:
October 24, 2009 at 12:00pm
October 31, 2009 at 12:00pm
November 7, 2009 at 12:00pm
with a possible 4th class later in the month if people are interested.
thanks!
2 Sep 2009 3:17PM
Hi All:
Put a link to Jonathan Beller's The Cinematic Mode of Production in the notes section. Might be worth looking at some of this as a secondary source, seems relevant.
Best,
Ken
8 Sep 2009 12:30PM
Hi All,
Our first meeting is getting close. Miraculously, with all mountains of literature we have on AAAARG to choose from, some of the background stuff that might be helpful to begin with is not on the site. The only piece that I would like us to read for the first session that is currently uploaded on the site is Georg Simmel's Metropolis and Mental Life. Other texts we are considering for the first meeting are excerpts from Crary's Suspensions of Perception and/or Kittler's Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter, and some of the recently published Focault lectures at the College de France 1978-79, The Birth of Biopolitics. Think this might help give us both some background reading and a sense of what is at stake in terms of the paradigms within which attention is often talked about and where it might be useful to take it. There might be one other primary source added to this list for this week, but I have to sort through what we have uploaded first.
For now start with the Simmel and I'll try to get the other stuff in PDF form asap. I also recommend Kracauer's "Boredom" as quick additional read influenced by Simmel's famous piece.
--Ken
15 Oct 2009 2:57AM
Hi Ken and all--
I'm looking forward to this class. But I'm wondering, since we're now down to only three meetings, if there's really any need for me to lead one on Wm. James etc. Maybe we should put that off for later, in case we decide to extend the course? I'm busy enough, I'd be happy simply to attend.
Matt
18 Oct 2009 11:54AM
Hi Matt,
Here's what I'm thinking. I think your focus on James as part of a genealogy of the adoption of cognitive science and behaviorism by the mid-century/post-war military industrial complex is extremely interesting. Given our limited time and the vastness of the issue, why don't take up this question up during part of week two. Rather than run an entire class, maybe you can lead us into a conversation about that topic and I'll take on issues of media television and the information economy. We can split our attention (so to speak) between behaviorism and war machines and behaviorism in consumer economies. We can kind of co-moderate. Sound reasonable?
--Ken
18 Oct 2009 11:55PM
I've uploaded the Kittler text for the first meeting:
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/4754/gramophone-film-typewriter-writing-science...
The Crary & Foucault will be up later today.
19 Oct 2009 11:36AM
Crary uploaded:
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/4793/suspensions-perception-attention-spectacle...
20 Oct 2009 5:06PM
hi Ken,
Could you clarify reading for the 1st class: Crary (only the one Caleb just linked to? or both in the aaarg library?), Kittler, plus which Foucault?
thanks much.
Liz
21 Oct 2009 12:41AM
Okay Ken, half of next week sounds fine to me.
Matt
21 Oct 2009 10:42AM
Hi Liz,
The readings for this week that are already uploaded are:
Georg Simmel
"Metropolis and Mental Life"
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/3611/metropolis-and-mental-life
Friedrich Kittler
"Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Writing Science)" - Introduction
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/4754/gramophone-film-typewriter-writing-science...
Jonathan Crary
"Suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle, and modern culture" Chapter One
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/4793/suspensions-perception-attention-spectacle...
There will be one more short text by Foucault from "The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College De France, 1978-1979" which will be uploaded soon.
21 Oct 2009 12:05PM
Hi everybody. Sorry I posted this yesterday as a comment on Caleb's note rather than in this comment's section. See you tomorrow! --ken
Hi All,
I think we should leave the Foucault for another time. So the reading for Saturday is Crary (the one Caleb uploaded the other day "Modernity and the Problem of Attention"), Kittler, Simmel, and Kracauer. This will give us a good overview and open up a number of possible threads for discussion.
Looking forward to Saturday.
Best,
Ken
from: dinermode
22 Oct 2009 6:56PM
In case people want to follow the thread:
https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2009-October/004001.html
23 Oct 2009 4:44PM
Just a reminder that our first meeting will be taking place today at noon at 951 Chung King Road (our new location):
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&q=951+chung+k...
see you all soon!
24 Oct 2009 9:38AM
I posted the Lindstrom article in the AAARG Library:
http://aaaaarg.org/files/textz/5018-they_all_believe_they.pdf
Still navigating the correct way to link this so it shows up in the class Issue...
24 Oct 2009 7:15PM
Hey everyone,
Here's the organization I mentioned earlier: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/index.html
Their work focused on developments in neurotechnology, cognitive sciences, and law, but I don't think they've been active since 2004/5.
24 Oct 2009 10:59PM
Hi all,
Here are the sources I have in mind for next week:
1. Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit: for general history:
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/history/
for progress reports
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/history/electronicarchive/progressreports/
just check out whatever interests you on these...
2. Kramer, Wiegmann, Kirlik eds.: Attention: From Theory to Practice
I'd say, read the introduction by Neville Moray, and then scan through the other chapters and read anything that strikes you. This is the book with the nuclear power plant etc.
3. There are two other introductory chapters presenting the dominant scientific paradigms for attention in 1969 and then in 2008, complementary, A. Neville Moray: Attention: Selective Processes... and B. Wright and Ward: Orienting of Attention. Just look at these if you feel like it. There's also C. Van Zomoren and Breuwer: Clinical Neuropsychology of Attention, but I seem to have messed up the right margin of the right page for the last half...
Again, those three I'd say are totally optional.
Then the background to which they all refer is
4. William James, Psychology. The Attention chapter is XI (about 55 pages), and the Habit chapter is IV (about 25 pages, fascinating--leads right to Deleuze).
Matt
25 Oct 2009 9:47AM
Hi All,
Great to get the conversation rolling! Really looking forward to next weeks material.
Just uploaded Taylor and a Talyorist technical manual by Gilbreth on a.aaaarg.org
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5081/principles-scientific-management
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5080/bricklaying-system
Taylor is a very quick read. You probably just need to peruse Gilbreth's Bricklaying System to get a sense, although I find it fascinating. Turns out there is serendipitous crossover with Ashley's recommended article by Lindstrom, which is focused on Gilbreth.
--Ken
26 Oct 2009 5:13PM
Did Laptops, Not Napping, Distract Northwest 188’s Pilots?
WSJ
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/10/26/did-laptops-not-napping-distract-...
26 Oct 2009 5:29PM
Hi Everyone,
I have posted a few links to film clips that help to provide a glimpse into the ideas of scientific management. The Prelinger Archive ( http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger ) is an interesting website for using moving images as primary resources. I have some more articles about scientific management, such as its application to domestic efficiency, and the use of photography in these studies, that I will post in case anyone is interested in reading more about the topic.
~Ashley
26 Oct 2009 8:14PM
new article on Baby Einstein videos and risk it may have on the attention span of children:
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/the-great-baby-eihttp://la.thep...
26 Oct 2009 9:00PM
marketing an eye-tracker (there are tons of these available...)
http://www.smivision.com/en/eye-gaze-tracking-systems/products/iview-x-h...
30 Oct 2009 11:08AM
Hey, thanks for that link. I've been checking out eye-tracking this week as well. Here's a link to some of Google's work (includes a short video where you can watch in RT how a person scans a webpage).
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/eye-tracking-studies-more-than-me...
Also check this link out on brainscanning technology and its use in determining viewers responses/preferences to films:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/tag/neurocinema/
30 Oct 2009 11:41AM
Relevant Journal:
http://app.psychonomic-journals.org/
30 Oct 2009 6:02PM
Hi everyone,
I posted an article "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching"
http://aaaaarg.org/files/textz/5262-executive_control_of_cognitive.pdf
There is a brief description of the article from APA:
http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html
1 Nov 2009 3:16PM
Hi All,
Sorry for the delay. Had a couple of tech pitfalls in converting and sizing the PDFs for aaaarg. Uploaded are the first two chapters of The Attention Economy.
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5283/attention-economy-ch-1
http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5284/attention-economy-ch-2
I also posted a good summary/overview on the relevant Foucault lectures in in a note section (or see Lemke on aaaarg.org)
Will post Beller and something on ADD in a short while now that I've figured out the PDF thing. Okay, now back to the scanner.
--k
2 Nov 2009 11:57AM
A couple of interesting diagnostic and public service web sites on ADHD.
http://www.help4adhd.org/index.cfm?varLang=en
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/index.html
2 Nov 2009 6:35PM
Hi All,
The only reading we are missing for next week that will cover the array of topics on the table is a source on User Experience/Interaction Design. Caleb has suggested a few interesting websites. Take a look at these two if you are able.
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2009/04/06/the-design-with-intent-...
http://iainstitute.org/tools/
I may ad something tomorrow on this topic if I can get a hold on one of the industry standard manuals on UE/IE.
Will get back to you tmrw on that.
best,
ken
3 Nov 2009 11:55PM
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for a great class and for all the activity on the site. Donna and everyone else, please keep posting links! This class page is already a great resource and we should keep filling it up with things we come across.
Also, I encourage you to propose spinoff classes from this one if there were threads that you would like to continue discussing (eg, "'What comes next?' re: neoliberalism" which would be great!).
Hope to see you soon at TPS.
Best,
c
9 Nov 2009 10:34PM