Attention and the Eye of Sauron
…for example, Scoble has been called the attention bunny. People pay attention to what Scoble pays attention to. He is an Attention Hub. Our Collective Attention, linking to where he links, looking where he looks, reminds me of the Eye of Sauron. A blazing and powerful force that sees through Middle Earth in search of something of great interest and import, the Ring. What Ring are we looking for? What Ring is Scoble looking for? What motivates him and catches his attention–and ours?
By all accounts, Scoble is a great guy (I wish I’d had an excuse to meet him while we were both at Seattle Mind Camp), so this isn’t really about him, per se, but more about the idea. But consider the power he wields in directing attention.
“But”, you may say, “I have a choice whether or not to pay attention to what Scoble pays attention to.” Yes, of course, you do. But given the choice between drowning in the depths of more irrelevant information than you could ever absorb, it’s tempting not to choose a reliable filter.
The idea of such a controlling filter was a bit of a scandalous topic in Chris Pirillo’s talk on gada.be, RSS, and OPML. Gada.be is one way to circumvent a filter. But I think I’d rather drink from a faucet than a firehose.
Still, when I choose a filter, I submit myself to a powerful force, a force that influences where I invest my attention.