on maintaining attention

Ordinary Abundance

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

Ordinary Abundance

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

So you want to write a package manager

You woke up this morning, rolled out of bed, and thought, “Y’know what? I don’t have enough misery and suffering in my life. I know what to…

Why do we collect things?

Desire, nostalgia, loss, and completeness in the personal collections of Joseph Cornell, Peter Blake, and Vladimir Nabokov

Ente Space

A private space for sharing everyday moments with friends and family.

Federating friendly spaces - Roomy

hearkening back to the cozy vibes of old-web neighborhoods

the attention cottage – The Homebound Symphony

In the last few days I have come across, or had sent to me, anguished cries from people who have recently been dragged on social media and cannot fathom the injustice of it, and I find myself thinking: You haven’t figured this out yet? You complain about your words being taken out of context when you post them in an environment whose entire structure — as we have all known for fifteen years now — demands context collapse? How many more times do you plan to smack your head against that unyielding wall?

About the Atmosphere

I’m writing this from the beautiful UBC campus in Vancouver where ATmosphereConf 2026 is taking place. It’s a gathering of developers, researchers, and entrepreneurs who are passionate about keepin…

What I learned by living without artificial light

Linda Geddes decided to live for weeks in only candlelight — no bulbs, no screens. Along the way, she discovered simple things that everyone can try to sleep and feel better.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every ...

The attention market—and what is wrong with it

Attention is described as a “scarce commodity” that is traded in “a marketplace.” This, it is further claimed, contributes to a “widespread sense of attentional crisis.” But is there really an attention market, and if so, what, if anything, is wrong with it? We defend the claim that there are markets in attention. We provide an account of such attention markets and use that account to address what is morally wrong with them. Our account draws on knowledge of how attention works and what roles it plays in the mind. The attention market trades in an ability to influence our attention – somewhat (though not exactly) like the labor market trades in an ability to influence how we use our capacity for work. Specifically, the commodity it trades in is attentional landscaping potential, viz. the ability to systematically influence patterns of attention by changes to the sensory environment individuals are exposed to. Attention markets thus, we argue, commodify influence over a human capacity that plays a central role in shaping individual experience, agency, and belief formation. This feature of attention markets makes them ethically problematic. As markets in access to external influence, attention markets pose a special threat to individual autonomy and escape the classical liberal defense of free markets. Those who value autonomy should worry about the attention markets that exist today.

Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy

The attention economy is the economic system in which human attention is the scarce resource. This literature takes a particular passage in Herbert Simon’s seminal Chapter Designing Organization fo...

Letter of Recommendation: Washing Dishes (Published 2019)

Cutting through the clutter, in life and the kitchen sink.