Investing attention in interesting opportunities

Investing Attention Essential to Viable Growth (Part #4)

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The argument can be readily accepted that people choose to invest attention in features of their environment perhaps, ironically, to be understood as "environ-mental". From these they derive particular interest: sport, music, friends, politics, nature, etc -- in which they are interested. Less clear is how this "investment" is to be understood and the nature of the "interest" received -- the "return on investment".

Clearly advertisers are especially preoccupied with this process. In effect they have to present "investment opportunities" to potential customers much as is done in presentations of projects for which capital investment is sought. The intricate mix of associations is evident in this phrase in that "capital" can be construed through its associations with the head -- typically engaged thereby in the investment process, whether or not emotional or gut feelings are fundamental to the investment process as a whole.

How is interest embodied in an advertised product or service? Curiously, although it is thereby rendered "interesting", the latter term is not a feature of financial terminology -- however "interesting" an investment proposal may be claimed to be. To be "very interesting" is not explicitly indicative of a financial "return on investment" -- however much this may be implied. The same might be said of the verb form -- as in "to interest" a potential investor.

It is very clear that attention can be "invested" in a wide variety of processes unrelated to those which are a preoccupation of economics and finance. These may include many forms of recreation, social and family relations, cultural activities, and personal development practices. Those active professionally in the financial markets may well claim they are retiring in order to invest in these activities. This might be better understood as a shift in investment priorities -- a rethinking of the investment portfolio.

Despite the extensive insight into interest in the financial realm, it is relatively unclear how interest in the non-financial realm is to be understood. It may even be somewhat of a mystery as to the interest someone derives from this intangible realm -- especially when an investment is claimed to be "disinterested". Such interest may even be seen as obsessive, possibly framed as pathological. A common phrase is the "devotion" of attention to some such focus -- as a "focus of attention". How is the financial sense of "payment" associated with use of the phrase "pay attention" -- and its extension to the payment of some to "attend"? What payment does an advertiser make to a potential consumer to elicit attention? Curiously, rather than payment, French emphasizes lending (as with prêter attention), to be compared with "lend me your ear".

Perhaps more intriguing is how and why such investment is sensed as corresponding to an interesting opportunity to which it is appropriate to "pay attention". So framed, the investment becomes understandably one of investing time -- attention and time then to be seen as inextricably entangled in the "attention time" sought by advertisers, or in the "quality time" so valued in relationships. The two are provocatively associated through the manner in which attraction is cultivated to elicit interest, most obviously in sexual relationships -- as offering an interesting investment. Time is then especially evident in the interplay between the short-term and long-term preoccupations of those involved.

Although experientially obvious, the nature of the interest-generating dynamic may elude conventional description. How is a potential investor "turned on"? The possibility has been speculative explored separately (Global Governance via a Double-breasted Strange Attractor: cognitive implication in a dynamic sexual metaphor, 2009). Potentially highly relevant is the nature of the boredom-generating dynamic which triggers "turning off" and disinvestment (Lars Svendsen and John Irons, A Philosophy of Boredom, 2005). Taken together, the two dynamics are significant in defining direction of movement in cyberspace (and the noosphere).

This more general understanding of interest has been associated with the term interestingness, most notably as highlighted with respect to artificial intelligence by Douglas Lenat. The term now figures in a US patent (Interestingness Ranking of Media Objects). With respect to an early paper, now a sociology cult classic, by Murray S. Davis (That's Interesting: towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology, Philosophy of Social Sciences, 1971), Oliver Burkeman (This column will change your life: interestingness v truth, The Guardian, 5 April 2014) notes:

What is it, Davis asks, that makes certain thinkers - Marx, Freud, Nietzsche - legendary? It has long been thought that a theorist is considered great because his theories are true, he writes, but this is false. A theorist is considered great, not because his theories are true, but because they are interesting. Even in the world of academia, most people aren't motivated by the truth. What they want, above all, is not to be bored. ...We live in the Era of Interestingness: attention is money, and purveyors of the interesting can make millions from Twitter feeds of amazing facts - even if they're not always true facts - or from books or blogs offering intriguingly counterintuitive perspectives... Moreover, Davis argues, there are only a handful of main ways for an idea to be interesting. To grab people's attention, you should argue that something we think of as bad is good, or vice versa; that some apparently individual phenomenon is really collective; that several seemingly disparate things are actually part of the same thing; and a few others....

In his paper, Davis included The Index of the Interesting.

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