Contentious argument - "the ability to shape people’s attention is now a more valuable commodity than the things around which our attention is presumably focused" - Richard Lanham, cited by Eric Gordon in an article in latest Digital Humanities Quarterly (thanks to George Siemens for link).
I'm going to use this next week in a set of sessions with MoD training experts. Is their business one where the thing you're trying to learn about is less valuable than the commanding of attention ?
I think he's right but for the wrong reason. This is a truism that has probably always been the case. That's to say, I don't think any but a hard line Platonist would have disagreed 2500 years ago. Nor would any teacher even possibly a religious teacher in the time since. So it's right because it's always been right; not because the digital age has suddenly made it a burning question.
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