The Economics of Attention
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Politicians, journalists, marketers, the entertainment industry, even educators and the clergy – everyone wants our attention. Attention is increasingly considered a form of capital, part of a parallel economy of the mind. On April 9, 2008, frog and the Norman Lear Center came together to host a cross-disciplinary discussion on the topic, looking at how this new attention economy is informing business models in advertising, media, and design. Participants included Richard A. Lanham, Professor Emeritus of English at UCLA and author of The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information; David Merkoski, Creative Director at frog design; and Marty Kaplan, Director of the Norman Lear Center at USC. The conversation examined how shrinking attention spans and the commoditization of attention shape our culture for good and for ill.
Videos from Past Events
Speaker SeriesChurchill Club: Max Levchin and Sarah LacyAn evening with award-winning journalist Sarah Lacy and Max Levchin, CEO of Slide and co-founder of PayPal.
Speaker SeriesObama and Politics 2.0: Documenting History in Real-TimeA conversation with Arun Chaudhary, director of field production for Barack Obama.
Speaker SeriesThe Economics of AttentionHow the new attention economy is informing business models in advertising, media, and design.
Speaker SeriesThe Many Shades of GreenThree conversations about environmentalism.
From Bedroom to Battlefield: Designing for the BodyA discussion of design and business between the executives of sexual accessories company and military design firm.
The New Rhetoric
Kipum Lee - July 17, 2008
There is an article by Richard Buchanan (“Design and the New Rhetoric: Productive Arts in the Philosophy of Culture,” from Philosophy
and Rhetoric, Vol. 34, No. 3) where he states that a product is an argument. Like rhetoric, an art with no subject matter, design is the proper balancing of logos (useful), pathos (usable), and ethos (desirable). Buchanan's paper makes a direct connection of rhetoric with design. There is also another paper he wrote that explicitly focuses on rhetoric and digital products titled, "Good Design in the Digital Age" (http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/good-design-i...).