"Law professor and "net neutrality" coiner tracing how industries capture attention and power."
Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and a former White House technology and competition-policy adviser under the Obama administration. He is best known for coining the term "net neutrality" in a 2003 paper and for a career studying how information industries acquire and use power. His books include The Master Switch, The Attention Merchants, and The Curse of Bigness. Before entering academia, Wu clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court and worked in Silicon Valley; he has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other major publications.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants traces 150 years of attention-harvesting business models, from patent-medicine posters to algorithmic feeds, and what reclaiming your…
Read Summary →Capture audience attention cheaply, then resell it to advertisers -- a model unchanged since the 1830s penny press.
Audiences periodically push back against over-harvesting of their attention, forcing reform or migration to new media.
A deliberate, ongoing practice of protecting personal time and attention from commercial capture.
"The real purpose of this book is less to persuade you one way or the other, but to get you to see the terms plainly."— The Attention Merchants
"Attention merchants are always growing new heads."— The Attention Merchants
Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants traces 150 years of attention-harvesting business models, from patent-medicine posters to algorithmic feeds, and what reclaiming your focus actually requires.
