“The point is that new tools in general, and Twitter in particular, greatly challenge the binary dichotomy of attention as something that is either given or taken away, distracted. Instead, these tools allow us to direct attention to destinations where it can be sustained with more concentration and immersion.”
I found this particular quote from the article interesting because it discusses how new forms of media do not fit in strictly cut categories, just like how “content” and “curation” are morphing and changing to follow those new forms of media. Platforms like Twitter and Tumblr are often used not only to show and discuss different topics of interest, but also to move attention to different ideas that may not be readily available immediately on the aforementioned media platforms. The second part of my selected quote summarizes that in a much neater fashion. For those of us who use social media as a way to get information and news, we don’t read the headline of an article written in a tweet and go, “Well, I guess that’s it!”. If it is genuinely alarming or intriguing, one would click on the linked article or web page to read further in depth of what was summarized or introduced in the tweet or post. Of course, curating certain content together could produce a certain response, such as an environmentalist consistently posting articles about climate change and endangered species and peoples. Someone who is exploring that individual’s page would see the patterns of the content they have collected together and see that they are concerned with the state of our planet. Maybe after noticing that pattern, they might look into the issues themselves and create their own curated lists of content that other people might become interested in as well. This fits well into the space of “directing attention” as opposed to “[giving] or [taking] away”, and it’s interesting to see how more and more posts and tweets fall under that category.
