Attention and Alienation - by Aarushi Bhandari

About the Book

Aarushi Bhandari offers a new way to understand the political economy of attention, combining quantitative analysis and personal narrative to critique the role of information and communications technologies in global society.

Book Synopsis

The worldwide spread of the internet has revolutionized communication at a harrowing cost: the relentless commodification of attention. Algorithm-driven capitalism extracts profit from not only physical bodies but also the emotional and creative labor of internet users. This economic system alienates us from our inmost selves and gives us only a gnawing longing that cannot be satiated--a spiraling collective mental health crisis. The exchange is deeply unequal: we pay attention and receive alienation.

Aarushi Bhandari offers a new way to understand the political economy of attention, combining quantitative analysis and personal narrative to critique the role of information and communications technologies in global society. Ranging across levels, from international development policy to online social movements through individual internet users, she examines how these technologies have fostered a host of unequal exchanges. Pervasive inequalities--between richer and poorer countries, between progressive social movements and the reactions against them, and between technological elites and the online population--now reinforce one another, with far-reaching consequences. Along the way, Bhandari shares her own journey as a chronically online millennial woman growing up among the Kathmandu elite in a dominant-caste Hindu family during the Nepali Civil War. A bold and incisive critical analysis, Attention and Alienation also considers how to reclaim the potential of the internet and design new systems that prioritize collective well-being.

Review Quotes

Bhandari adroitly weaves together theory, data, and personal experience to shed new light on the structural inequalities and parasitic nature of the internet, then shows us how we can push back and collectively flourish. Well-written and engaging, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in inequality in the digital age.--Erik Schneiderhan, University of Toronto

Bhandari provides an insightful analysis of the complicity of development institutions with "big tech" in international "economies of attention" that prey on communities in the Global South by extracting intimate aspects of the self for capital accumulation. An important reading for anyone interested in the political economy of ICTs.--Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, Franklin & Marshall College

About the Author

Aarushi Bhandari is an assistant professor of sociology at Davidson College.