—The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2)
By Tim Wu
Have you ever found yourself speaking to someone at length only to realize they haven’t heard a single thing you’ve said? As remarkable as our ability to see or hear is our capacity to disregard. This capacity, along with the inherent need to pay attention to something at any given moment, has dictated the development of the attention industries.
We ignore so much stuff for a simple reason: if we didn’t, we’d quickly be overwhelmed, our brains flooded until they seized up. Depending on the kind of information, it takes our brains some amount of time to process it, and when we are presented with too much at once we begin to panic, like a waiter who has too many orders shouted at him at once.
But our capacity to ignore is limited by another fact: we are always paying attention to something. If we think of attention as a resource, or even a kind of currency, we must allow that it is always, necessarily, being “spent”. There is no saving it for later. The question is always, what shall I pay attention to? Our brains answer this question with varying degrees of volition, from “shhh—I’m reading this” to letting our minds wander in the direction of whatever might draw it in, whether in the corner of our screen or along some road we are walking. That is where the attention merchant makes his opportunity. But to succeed he must motivate us to withdraw our attention from where it is and surrender it to something else. It needn’t be a thoughtful calculation.
《注意力经济·如何把大众的注意力变成生意》（二）
作者：吴修铭【美】
你是否曾经发现自己对某个人长篇大论，而你说的话他们根本一句也没有听到？人类具有非凡的视力和听力，但是忽视的能力也同样非比寻常。这种能力与任何特定时刻都需要注意某些事物的内在需求，支配着注意力行业的发展。
我们忽略很多事物的原因很简单：如果我们不去忽略，那么很快就会不知所措，而大脑则会被源源不断的信息淹没，最终停止工作。大脑处理信息所需要的时间取决于信息类型，当我们同时面对过多的信息时，就会惊慌失措，就像一位服务员一下子听到了太多人点餐一样。
但是我们的忽视能力存在另外一种局限：我们总会在某些事物上集中注意力。如果我们将注意力当作一种资源，甚至一种货币，我们不可避免地要去“消费”它。这种资源是无法存下来以备未来之需的。恒久不变的问题在于，我应该将注意力集中到什么上？我们的大脑通过不同程度的决断能力来回答这个问题，从“嘘……我正在读这段话”，到让你的思维随波逐流的，也许是我们电脑屏幕的一角，抑或是在某条我们沿途走过的路上。这正是注意力商人的可乘之机。但是为了成功吸引注意力，他必须促使我们将注意力从某处转移到另一处。这并不一定是基于心思缜密的计算。
