Chris Hayes

I had, like, the blue book. Blue book, right, yeah. Yeah, and you would... In some ways, right, the lack of choice forced a kind of focus. I think you and I, you know, we're roughly the same cohort. I was at the sort of front end of, like, RSS Google readers and blogs and this idea that you could synthesize an insane amount of information...

I had, like, the blue book. Blue book, right, yeah. Yeah, and you would... In some ways, right, the lack of choice forced a kind of focus. I think you and I, you know, we're roughly the same cohort. I was at the sort of front end of, like, RSS Google readers and blogs and this idea that you could synthesize an insane amount of information...

very quickly if you kind of curated it and you created processes to feed it into you. And those processes have gotten much harder and they've been totally overwhelmed by the evolution such that I now have a very hard time even figuring out what the funnel I'm trying to construct is.

very quickly if you kind of curated it and you created processes to feed it into you. And those processes have gotten much harder and they've been totally overwhelmed by the evolution such that I now have a very hard time even figuring out what the funnel I'm trying to construct is.

So if you think about labor, right, labor long predates labor. labor as a wage commodity in the industrial revolution, right? Human beings did stuff with their effort and toil from the time that they essentially evolved, right? Like if you're hunting, gathering, picking berries, that's work.

So if you think about labor, right, labor long predates labor. labor as a wage commodity in the industrial revolution, right? Human beings did stuff with their effort and toil from the time that they essentially evolved, right? Like if you're hunting, gathering, picking berries, that's work.

And labor evolved into an agrarian feudal systems and all kinds of different ways of small shopkeepers that did work recognizably. But what happens in the industrial revolution is that that human effort is

And labor evolved into an agrarian feudal systems and all kinds of different ways of small shopkeepers that did work recognizably. But what happens in the industrial revolution is that that human effort is

gets embedded in a set of institutions, legal institutions, market institutions, that commodify it so that every hour of wage labor is equal to every other hour of wage labor and then sold on a market for a price.

gets embedded in a set of institutions, legal institutions, market institutions, that commodify it so that every hour of wage labor is equal to every other hour of wage labor and then sold on a market for a price.

And that's an enormous transformation in the human experience, total transformation in all social relations, political relations, economic relations, and also, crucially, the subjective experience of being alive in the world. I think something similar is happening with attention.

And that's an enormous transformation in the human experience, total transformation in all social relations, political relations, economic relations, and also, crucially, the subjective experience of being alive in the world. I think something similar is happening with attention.

And it started a while ago, the same way that the Industrial Revolution actually starts sort of earlier than we think of it at its peak. But we're reaching a crescendo where this thing, attention, which predates it being commodified, people have always paid attention to stuff, is now this market commodity that's extracted and sold.

And it started a while ago, the same way that the Industrial Revolution actually starts sort of earlier than we think of it at its peak. But we're reaching a crescendo where this thing, attention, which predates it being commodified, people have always paid attention to stuff, is now this market commodity that's extracted and sold.

So there's a prehistory here, which is that from the birth of what we would call recognizably modern media, and the penny press and magazines are probably the first place that you would call it that, particularly Benjamin Day's New York Sun, which has the idea that you charge people a penny for a newspaper, you lose money on each newspaper, but you sell the advertising, right?

So there's a prehistory here, which is that from the birth of what we would call recognizably modern media, and the penny press and magazines are probably the first place that you would call it that, particularly Benjamin Day's New York Sun, which has the idea that you charge people a penny for a newspaper, you lose money on each newspaper, but you sell the advertising, right?

So the thing you're selling is the audience. Modern media has had this model for a long time, and basically it's all been selling attention. Billboards, newspapers, magazines, radios, TV. There's a few things that make it a difference in kind now, I would say.

So the thing you're selling is the audience. Modern media has had this model for a long time, and basically it's all been selling attention. Billboards, newspapers, magazines, radios, TV. There's a few things that make it a difference in kind now, I would say.

One is the sophistication of how minutely you could capture people's attention and how quickly and sophisticatedly you could bring it to market. So you've now got these nanosecond auctions that are auctioning off your eyeballs and in the moment you're loading a webpage or in the moment that Instagram Reels is going through. So that's one change. The other is just the ubiquity.

One is the sophistication of how minutely you could capture people's attention and how quickly and sophisticatedly you could bring it to market. So you've now got these nanosecond auctions that are auctioning off your eyeballs and in the moment you're loading a webpage or in the moment that Instagram Reels is going through. So that's one change. The other is just the ubiquity.