Attention Paid vs. Paying Attention in Pervasive Computing — MIT Media Lab

in this Special Issue ... explore the twin demons relating to attention... unwanted attention paid to us ... versus our own attention being unwittingly diverted ... living in a Panopticon versus the specter of our personal cognitive resources being fragmented and deleteriously diverted by too many competing digital factions that exploit intimate knowledge of their users...

Surveillance capabilities once accessible in limited ways by law enforcement or intelligence agencies are now potentially endemic ... the weaponization of data ... with targeted distortion of truth injected back... can all become much worse, when powerful bad actors, authoritarian regimes, etc. hack or casually exploit information from distributed sensors for direct harm ... or ... “societal control.” ... tremendous power/data imbalance between individuals versus corporations or governments ...

ever smaller sensory “bugs” ... Can we ... escape from being monitored when it suits us?... most of us now willingly put streaming cameras all over our homes ... smart environments ... will get to know us better than we know ourselves ... How will today’s overwhelmingly distracting online experience... scale to ... pervasive displays and augmented reality...?

preferences ... can help ... but we already see that being used for further manipulation, with “ads” targeted more ... or “fake news” personally tailored ... to increase their effectiveness.

Are there means of putting users in true control here, with their precious and limited attentional capability respected and augmented rather than diverted, diminished, and exploited? ... we need to accelerate innovation on protective-while-enabling societal, ethical, legal, commercial, and even anthropological frameworks