Subjectivization in the age of the attention economy
Originally published on my Substack on Sep 2, 2022
What would freedom from the web entail? Not a complete renunciation of the internet, nor of its culture and connections. Freedom is only relative (absolute freedom is just death), so what I mean by “from the web” in this case would not mean having no presence on, or connections within, online platforms.
Being absent from the internet is only a partial kind of freedom that would cause unfreedom in other areas, such as being able to advance your creative projects. Getting anything done with others today pretty much necessitates using the internet. Absolute freedom from the web would be like absolute freedom from society: you’ll “freely” get lonely and go mad in the mountains of your hermitage.
But you’ll also go mad using the internet all the time. Too much time spent “socializing” online likewise results in loneliness. Insofar as genuine being with others is possible online (solicitude), it is compromised at the point that you lose touch with genuine being with oneself (solitude).
If all your time and energy is habitually turned towards the attention economy you don’t have any for fusing time-energy into routine effort sacrificed towards “deep work.” 1
The kinds of activities that demand deep work (3-6 hour blocks of time spent focusing on immersive problems) suffer the most. Because the internet is a state-spying and capital-valorizing apparatus,2 its “interests” are not exactly always our own. An attention economy is better thought of as a war for and against attention itself. Not for your attention, but for statistical attention. To say we are “just numbers” to these machines does not go far enough.
The primary weapon of attention warfare is not the smartphone in our hands or pockets, which is only one nodal point in a larger circuit. The primary weapon is seduction itself, of which the smartphone is only one demonstration of how sophisticated the tools of this warfare have become.
Psychology and social science serving Big Data have taken seduction to a new level in the last two decades that will be remembered and researched for the rest of historical time. We absolutely cannot fathom the implications of this current situation, but we feel its effects in the form of perpetual distraction.
There are, of course, other side effects, which are good for the burgeoning pharmaceutical companies that provide lifetime subscriptions to everything from depression, anxiety, and ADHD for increasing numbers of humans, including (this has to be mentioned) children who are only a few years old.
This is nothing new. Surely you’ve had these thoughts. We all have. The implications and ramifications of these forms of technology on mental health will become common place in any circle where they have not already. What I can’t stop thinking about though?
If seeing oneself reflected in mirrors and the reactions of others is the formative experience of the ego (Lacan’s Mirror Stage), which was already a necessary illusion that takes images for the thing-itself (or perhaps we should say “as a unified thing in-and-for-oneself”), then today there is an “algorithmic stage” in subjective development.
The algorithmic stage instills a fundamental understanding at the subject’s pre-cognitive level: That one cannot merely gain a unified sense of self through identification with the image in the mirror, nor the gaze and reactions of the concrete other “in real time.” Real time, in this sense, gets at the fact that in the real world there is a time and place for everything. We cannot have recognition on demand. “Sometimes mommy has to go do other things.”
The internet persists on the fantasy of “recognition on demand.” It purports to stand in for concrete others who are not always immediately available or interested.
To say that an industry simulates recognition is not to say there is in fact no recognition to be gained through that industry. For example, genuine recognition may still be possible in today’s university, even though it has become increasingly simulated. Likewise, recognition and genuine connections are possible online, but the deck is stacked against you (especially for reasons having to do with the virtuous circle between solitude and solicitude in chapter 2 of Waypoint).
Genuine recognition cannot come from others who don’t understand what it is you have to offer or have achieved. Likewise, genuine care and concern tend to require a more intimate understanding of the other than is made possible by platforms and mediums.3
Let’s briefly consider the ways that platforms, as mediums, get in the way of genuine recognition and care, i.e. solicitude. We will do this by way of return to the concept of the algorithmic stage.
The algorithmic stage thwarts the mirror stage by taking it to another level. Rather than finding a sense of identity in the world of real time where everything has its time and place, the ego develops a dependence not on images in real time, but rather on instantaneously granted simulations. These satisfy one’s desire for solicitude and selfhood in the same way that soda quenches thirst, i.e. more satisfying in the short-term but less so in the longer-term.
Most damaging of all, the algorithmic stage habituates in the subject a sense that not being seen results in loss of touch with others. You have to routinely keep yourself afresh in the eyes of the algorithm so as to get the chance to exist (being seen and remembered) for others. Doing so puts contradictory demands on the subject, where you are damned if you do or do not play by the algorithmically determined community norms.
Algorithms are essentially pragmatists, seeking only “what works.”4
They are able to find answers to problems that were not even discovered yet by trial and error aggregated to a level that defies comprehension. They prey upon our desire (and, through this, attention) in a way that bypasses our higher order levels of rationality by hijacking ancient brain processes and predictable bio-psycho-social tendencies.
If Big Data is as valuable as oil, and both the state and capital have inherent needs for its refinement and monopolization, then all money and power is against us coming into a freer relation to these means as our disposal. That means there has never been more power opposed to you, me, and everyone we love living the examined life.
So what would “freedom from the web” look like? Definitely not living in denial, acting as though you are not always already immersed in this world you seek to negate. Definitely not deleting all of your accounts and scrubbing your online identity to the best of your ability. Every partial freedom overdone leads to the negation of other freedoms.
Other freedoms that concern us, the ones that got us on here in the first place, include, but are not limited to, building relationships, staying up to date on important information, and research. We crave companionship, communities of potential recognition, and mutual concern. Though the internet cannot satisfy these things on its own, it nonetheless affords its users state of the art means (or tools) towards those ends.
I get the term Deep Work from Cal Newport’s book by that title.
Read Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
I know “mediums” is grammatically incorrect, but the rules of English grammar need to adjust to the fact that “media” means something entirely different to people now than the plural of medium. Whether or not the changes are ever made, I will continue to say “mediums” because I do not wish to signify “the news media” when that is not what I am saying.
On machine learning:
A passing, mostly-idiotic thought I had while reading this article is whether the psychoanalytic clinic, especially now that sessions are largely conducted over zoom, should conduct transactions between analysts and analysands via a subscription model, like Netflix. I wonder if Lacan would change the way the business of psychoanalysis is conducted. I guess more seriously phrased the question is how does the clinic respond to the newer sense of loss evoked by fetishist disavowal? Has your experience running Theory Underground given you any preliminary insights into this topic?
I don’t think developing Theory Underground has given me insight into anything related to the clinic, but I’ve wondered about how Zoom presents a problem for the clinic. What was the purpose of lying on a couch in the presence of another you aren’t looking at? What does the medium of Zoom add or subtract into this dynamic? Nothing is truly “private” or “unmediated” in any sense of the word if it is done over Zoom. Everything done over Zoom is compromised by the mere fact of existing on the internet. So I definitely wonder about that one.
I haven’t thought about a Patreon model but it makes sense that Lacan might have done that – except he doesn’t want people to forget they are paying for the service. Membership kind of makes it feel like it is not a transaction each time. Every time you go to the gym they don’t put their hand out and say “put the money on this palm.” With that said, the image of Lacan sending people Venmo requests is pretty funny.
Love the question, “What does “freedom from the web” look like?” The web offers many freedoms and traps, so becoming aware and skilled at navigating these can become a pillar of a true life.
Thank you for sharing, Dave, much food for thought!