Structure beginnings

Richard Lanham's handling of Attention Structures makes a scary observation; style matters more than substance? How/when did we get here? Well, the large amounts of information being proliferated seem to blame. We are no longer in search of information, information is in search of us. And it usually is all the same, and so the burden is on, for lack of a descriptive word, rhetors to get to us (consumers of information); they have to get our attention by appealing to our sensitivities.

It seems to me that these attention structures have a lot to do with digital rhetoric. Digitization of content annihilates distances between consumers and producers of knowledge. With that distance shortened and information abundant, what is scarce is human attention. The attention we consumers need to make sense of information. I guess the definition of economics changes; as per Lanham, economics becomes not about scarce but abundant resources.

However, to make sense of information, we need to oscillate our attention between style and substance.

Fascinating stuff.