This was a very interesting task, and I’m not even sure I made it to the end! Admittedly I did open the link a few times because I wanted to progress forward and get better. When the pop-up window said ‘hurry up, time is ticking’ with the lock/unlock button, I didn’t notice the ‘close’ symbol at the bottom and thought I was locked out of the game. Therefore I closed and reopened it a few times until I figured out that there was a ‘close’ button and you could continue with the game. Also, the few times that I clicked too quickly without reading closed me out of the game. I should have taken screenshots as I went along, perhaps to show my journey, but I was persistent in wanting to be successful. This definitely alludes to the marketing tactic of feeling a certain way!
On the first screen, I noticed you had to carefully read the questions because the colors and check box were in spots trying to trip you up. For example, the wording of ‘I do not agree to the terms’ with the check box already clicked. On screen 2, I skipped over the photo because it already had the loading image, and the word ‘upload’ was relatively light. I went straight down to the checkboxes but was a little annoyed with myself because I didn’t notice till the last row that there was a unselect all button. This screen was relatively straightforward once I realized I had to upload a photo. When I got to screen 3, I almost went into autopilot filling in the questions. What I found tricky on this page was the age slider. I eventually aligned the year to the age so that I could progress. Also, the male/female button threw me because I thought the blue would highlight your choice, but the white did. It was also automatically on female, which I didn’t expect. The last step was the most frustrating for me, and I think I gave up before the end. The endless loop of questions made me think it wasn’t going to end. I started to play around with the homophones to see if the outcome of the question would change, but I was still in the same place. Harris discussed in his TED talk how outrage is a good way of getting our attention. While I did feel quite frustrated through the fourth page, it wasn’t quite in the way Harris discussed. Had I been in a discussion forum or working through this site in person, my attention due to outrage may have changed because I could have heard from others while they were completing it.
This website did a good job of emphasizing how our attention can be managed. I hadn’t considered how AI (Artificial Intelligence) works to gather my attentional data onto sites I use, such as Facebook. Citton (2017) discusses how paying attention is a “genuine activity” (p. 22) that involves “weaving together observations and gestures “ (Citton, 2017, p. 22). The AI algorithms are combining what we are viewing online to better get our attention in future searches and scrolls. For example, I have experienced situations where I was online shopping, and then over the next few days, similar items have shown up in ads on my social media page to get my attention that there is something else I might be interested in.
Something that I have found helpful for myself to help control my attention is to have timers on my social media pages on my phone so that I have only 60 minutes on the app, and then I will get a notification on my phone that my time on the app is up for the day. Similarly, using my iPhone screen time function, I can track how my attention is being given to social media, text messages, and other apps on my phone like email. Attention economy practices are surprisingly manipulative algorithms. This module definitely allowed me to reconsider how I go about using social media and what information I put out into the algorithms.
References
Citton, Y. (2017). Introduction and Conclusion: From Attention Economy to Attention Ecology. In The Ecology of Attention. John Wiley & Sons.
Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en