The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads Contributor(s): Wu, Tim (Author) |
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ISBN: 0804170045 ISBN-13: 9780804170048 Publisher: Vintage
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: September 2017 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Business & Economics | Advertising & Promotion - Business & Economics | Industries - Media & Communications |
Dewey: 659.1 |
Physical Information: 1" H x 5.2" W x 8" L (0.90 lbs) 432 pages |
Features: Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Price on Product |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: From the author of the award-winning The Master Switch, who coined the term net neutrality"--a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. One of the Best Books of the Year The San Francisco Chronicle * The Philadelphia Inquirer * Vox * The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become the ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. Wu's narrative begins in the nineteenth century, when Benjamin Day discovered he could get rich selling newspapers for a penny. Since then, every new medium--from radio to television to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook--has attained commercial viability and immense riches by turning itself into an advertising platform. Since the early days, the basic business model of "attention merchants" has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your time, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Full of lively, unexpected storytelling and piercing insight, The Attention Merchants lays bare the true nature of a ubiquitous reality we can no longer afford to accept at face value. |
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