Doro Franck and Georg Franck on:
The Economy of Attention

field of course. The main idea is: Aufmerksamkeit is something

we are short of. We live in an information society and notice

it, because we cannot escape from information. The good we are

short of is not information itself, but the capacity to do something

with the information, to select it, to use it. In a word:

Aufmerksamkeit is a tight good and it is getting tighter and tighter, because

the interesting uses of this Aufmerksamkeit are increasing.

The things that are tightest of all, i. e time and money, are not

getting tighter, because we take more of them or earn more. They

in fact are getting tighter, because the possible uses are increasing.

Money, for instance, gets chronically tight just when there is

enough of it around and when there is no lack of it. This is one

aspect of this economy of Aufmerksamkeit, the tightness of Aufmerksamkeit

as an energy that one has to find oneself.[...]

But Aufmerksamkeit is not only tight as this found energy, but

also as contribution of other people's Aufmerksamkeit, as the

attention one gets by others.

And as a kind of income Aufmerksamkeit is actually even

tighter. The battle for Aufmerksamkeit, starting with the

media, publishing, publicity etc., does not rage about one's

own Aufmerksamkeit, but about other people's Aufmerksamkeit.

Other people's Aufmerksamkeit is a demanded and tight good,

even more so, as one's own Aufmerksamkeit is already tight.

As Aufmerksamkeit gets less and less, we notice that it has

always been a very demanded good, that it is something

without which we cannot live, we need it.[...]

It's no wonder therefore, that with the developing of the

infrastructure Aufmerksamkeit is gathered in big masses and

can be redistributed. Through the media, in particular, a

new kind of economy emerges, a new kind of noticing, a new

kind of competition. The media are financial institutions

responsible for the redistribution, up to the capitalizing

of Aufmerksamkeit. They have developed just as financial

institutions, banks, credit institutions and stock markets

at the beginning of industrialization have. Aufmerksamkeit

according to economic criteria has the characteristics of a

new currency, with a very high utility value and on the

other hand an included exchange value. The media take over

the functions of a bank by granting credits. Tremendous

credits are granted to people who can appear in the media

and they have to cash in the credits. The whole thing has to

pay for the medium itself, that even takes up a stock market

function, choosing the big and fat capitals, the prominent

people, and looking after them or rather dealing in them. In

one word: we have landed - without noticing it - in a kind

of transformation of the economy, Aufmerksamkeit is leaving

money economy behind.

[...]

Dorothea Franck: The economy of Aufmerksamkeit appeals to me

as an image, but I only begin to understand something, if

I'm able to elaborate another image of the thing that is

under my nose. When I switch the television on,

Aufmerksamkeit is tapped. The viewing figures that I

contribute to, are converted in a very concrete way. To me

the fact that it's a battle for the Aufmerksamkeit of

others, seems interesting. The collecting and cashing in of

Aufmerksamkeit of others is then the ecology of

Aufmerksamkeit. It displays the quality of Aufmerksamkeit

that is inside us. Media develop with the mad offer: "look

at me, look at me, use me", etc.

Parallel to this, and apparently independently, the whole

scene is moving; "New Age", for instance, changes in

philosophy and in psychology as well, and that might be the

equivalent to it. If one looks at the development from this

angle - it isn't that something completely new is

emerging, but that things are redistributed and drifting

apart... If something is moving in one direction, than it

can be assumed that something is going on also in the other

direction. In a way I regard this as an immunity one tries

to build up, whether it is meditation or Yoga or other

psychologies, or an intuitive filtering. Instead of caring a

little about everything, there might be cultures - that are

viewed as totally independent -, that have an compensatory

effect.

G.F.: What appeals to me with this approach to

Aufmerksamkeit, isn't only to continue a kind of culture

criticism or to extend a culture criticism to an actually

newer type of economy. That would certainly be interesting

as well, but it's only one lane. In the theoretical economy

an economy of information is demanded very loudly, but it

isn't really getting going. I'm afraid that it is so,

because everybody is staring non-stop at the information,

which means, it must be a precious, tight good that is being

dealt with, distributed, produced. I think that this is the

wrong approach, it's one aspect, the other is a kind of new

access to the soul. For the interesting thing about

Aufmerksamkeit - not one's own, but that of the others -

isn't that one is registered in traffic counting or in a

list of circulation figures. The point is, that oneself

becomes an object of the data processing in other data

systems. The incredible kick of it - and the reason why the

contribution of other people's Aufmerksamkeit really is a

kind of drug and probably the greatest drug of all -, is the

idea that one plays a role in the consciousness of the

other. In a completely different world to which one has no

direct access. We all know only our own consciousness, no

one has directly inspected the world and the experiences of

somebody else. That is why so many philosophers ask

themselves, if solicism isn't right after all saying that

everything only happens in one's own imagination, that

everything is only a dream in one's own world and whether

there is still something beyond it; it is not clear, whether

there is a plurality of consciousness.

In a completely unintellectual way we naturally assume

that this plurality of consciousness exists, because we

couldn't stand it otherwise, if we wouldn't know that others

take notice of us, that we play a role in the consciousness

of others. Stupidly enough one can call this inclination to

like playing a role in other people's consciousness,

vanity, which I don't mind, because everybody who has some

of his senses left, is vain. I would even suggest that

vanity is a basis, one of the supporting columns of ethics.

By wanting to play a role in the other's consciousness, we

develop a feeling, an empathy for this other consciousness

as well.

If one doesn't express it so technically, but the way it is

really like, then one should talk of the soul. Scientists

say: yes, we do have to believe in the soul. Of course, you

can't measure the soul, as it is always only accessible in

the first person. But we all know what we are talking about,

if we say soul. Scientists know that, too, if they don't

express themselves as scientists. The interesting thing with

this economy is, that it shows what an experiment never can

show. One can't objectify the soul, one can't show it,

demonstrate in public that it exists. However, we have a

huge industry in the meantime to demonstrate it, the

business sense is just cleverer in this regard than the

theoretical sense. [...] And the industry doesn't do that

only to earn money, no, of course money is earned in

publicity and in media, but that's not the point. The point

is the ability of the media to redistribute Aufmerksamkeit

on a grand scale. I'm only mentioning it as a cue now - a

modern aristocracy, the aristocracy of prominence.

Prominent people simply are the big earners or the

millionaires of the income Aufmerksamkeit, they take in more

Aufmerksamkeit than they ever could invest and donate. The

thing about the media is that, if they had to motivate

everything with money, what would happen is that it would

be a rather boring, uninteresting industry, but as they can

seduce with the enticement : "You can get prominent with me,

and nowhere else!", they shape the best minds, the most

interesting people, the biggest beauties, the greatest

talents, whatever you want, they get it.

And the fact that money is earned this way, is almost a

by-product, although it isn't that uninteresting if you

consider that the most modern medium, the most modern branch

in this economy of Aufmerksamkeit is private television that

finances itself only through publicity. Which means that the

medium has to gain so much Aufmerksamkeit as a medium, that

it can sell the screen, its surface as an advertising panel.

Advertisement is to offer the attraction of Aufmerksamkeit as

a service for sale. So the income of Aufmerksamkeit is more

important than money for the medium and only in the last

link turning into cash matters. This idea turns quite a lot

upside down. The phenomenon which is denounced in culture

criticism as cynicism, as cynical mass business, should be a

new access to the soul. Which is usually denied or at least

met with a pitying smile. Yes, I like that.

D.F.: I know why I don't have a television - because I feel

that something is somehow tapped only one-sidedly. I get

something back, namely images and so-called information, but

what about the other media? Maybe the point that there is a

one-sidedness is the reason why television the way it is

today could only last for a very short period in history -

if you think in longer terms than twenty years - could only

last one "minute". What about the so-called interactive

systems then, how interactive are interactive systems in

historical systems ? And what about Aufmerksamkeit in this

context?

G.F.: I think there are two points of view. A realistic one

and a utopian one. I start with the latter. If we think of

the media, of this capitalism in the mind, it's quite right

to think of a new type of socialism and the slogan of this

socialism has been already proclaimed by Andy Warhol.

Happiness in future will mean to be famous once in one's

lifetime for 10 minutes. To experience what it's like when

all are watching. If there should be anything like that, it

can only be conceived with an interactive net. That not only

a few participate in what is going on in the net, but that -

just look - [all] switch in and watch.

It's quite possible that the development goes in this

direction. I just don't believe that the big capital is

going to collapse because of that. One has to imagine that

it has established itself and on this big capital a whole

class of big earners is dependent.

D.F.: A whole class of big earners of Aufmerksamkeit?

G.F.: A whole class of prominent people and of those who

want to get prominent, is dependent on it and of course, a

lot of talents are tied to it. And if you want to get really

rich, you have to go through the credit institutions, the

stock market. If someone wants to get a really big fish, he

has to look after his market value.

Konrad Becker: What I'm interested in, apart from the

personal approach to it, is the immaterial economy. I think

there must have been examples of it already before. If one

speaks of the banking system of Aufmerksamkeit, it must have

been possible also earlier to save Aufmerksamkeit. Just like

Uncle Scrooge's money store.

I don't think this could be solved on a magnetic level, I

don't think that a picture archive is the actual store of

Aufmerksamkeit, but there is an analogy between what is

called idols and stars in the media world and that what was

called before the cultic economy of Aufmerksamkeit. A guest

in Public Netbase who spoke about network politics and

information wars was a religious scholar. I would like to

know if you see a connection.

G.F.: Oh yes, that kind of saving of Aufmerksamkeit, the

earned Aufmerksamkeit is the state. And to be precise, not

quite so directly, but in an indirect way.

You get prominent not only by earning a lot of

Aufmerksamkeit now, but also by having earned

Aufmerksamkeit in the past. It's not enough - at least to

become a star - to have earned a lot of Aufmerksamkeit

without anybody noticing it. You get prominent because all

look up and see at the same time that the others are also

looking up.

The notion of a fan that there are many other fans and for

quite a while already, is the first necessary condition for

a star to be born. On top there must be, apart from the

direct fans, a huge body of followers, of indirect fans,

that only watch because the others do. All are watching now,

so there must be something to it!

The aureole of the star that surrounds the aura of a star is

the notion of every single fan and person watching that a

lot of Aufmerksamkeit is paid at that moment. This gloriole

makes the real star. Turning it round, this is the method to

save Aufmerksamkeit.

Aufmerksamkeit never will vanish totally again, it bears

interest in the medium of Aufmerksamkeit on its own. This is

one form of saving, of course there are others as well.

Knowledge altogether is crystallized Aufmerksamkeit.

[...]

D.F.: But Aufmerksamkeit wears down in time and therefore it

is no good that you can save. With some luck I can find

money that I've lost, but if I fritter away my time, my

Aufmerksamkeit, I'll never get it back again.

[...]

G.F.: The saving of time isn't possible. But, of course,

there is exploitation with this kind of capitalism of the

mind. The prominent person fetches living Aufmerksamkeit,

gathers it and benefits from it. If one offers the viewer

really something interesting, one can say, it's a fair deal.

If, however, one only cares, only prompts to keep the people

before the screen, if it doesn't matter anymore to give them

something in reward, then it isn't. They only have to be

kept long enough before the box, regardless of what happens

to them - this is a classical form of exploitation, of

course.

Still, I don't think that it will remain that way, maybe I'm

too optimistic in that respect.

D.F.: And what about Internet? Maybe that's organized in a

too anarchical way. And the interesting thing about it is,

that such a self-organizing system develops. This is why no

such monopolies could emerge so far. [...]

But a lot of Aufmerksamkeit is taken off the non-

interactive media, and I think, it forces the television

people and the media people to reflect.

[...]

Art and the economy of Aufmerksamkeit

D.F.: Concentration and risks are demanded for the

production, you can't speculate with the reaction of others.

One cannot explain in a socialist, but also in a normal,

mechanistically conceived world - our every day

consciousness is mainly mechanist after all - why we should

be interested in art, if art doesn't come into existence

following the fixed rules of entertainment. The best known

poems of this century are those about which people can [not]

say: I understand this once and for all. And still, they are

those, which cause a stir, because people say: I get

something out of it.

That's only possible if we imagine a world, a

"non-dividable" universe, in which the things that we feel

to be the mind are not separated of that what others do.

Only then you can understand that you can understand things

that aren't made understandable. I make the best art, if I do

it just for myself. If I don't look right and left.

The most individual thing must be a calming point that goes

deeper than what taps Aufmerksamkeit.

I want to turn to Paul Celan who gets a lot of

Aufmerksamkeit even though he is totally cryptic. He says: a

poem is a message in a bottle. But it arrives exactly where

it should arrive. He also talks a bit more prosaically about

it: A poem or piece of art that doesn't steal a glance at

the Aufmerksamkeit right from the start, is a

self-organizing structure that addresses itself, addresses

itself to the people to whom it means something, without a

rational reason.

In the context of this self-addressing message, I wondered:

What happens in these world-wide information nets, where

there is so much that nobody can use it in his lifetime, and

doesn't even want to. It sometimes is more rewarding to look

at one picture for a long time than to walk all along 100

pictures or to read one page of a text twenty times then

twenty pages of the text. I suspect that there is a kind of

intelligence in poetry that can be used concretely. In the

glut that emerges anarchically and self-organizingly into

something that one can only make out on the basis of style.

In our culture there is a cult about explicit information

that coincides with the time of the mechanical conception of

the world.

G.F.: Another comment on the self-address. I think that in

order to handle this crazy, overwhelming mass, new methods

are getting very important, maybe even a new medium of art

will emerge. I can't browse through everything anymore, it's

no more possible, I can no more check everything. I have to

work with another method. I can't calculate, check,

explicate, but have to - just as I read the expression of a

face - pay attention to - I'm saying this without being

careful - to style. Do I like it, don't I like it? [...]

So far only the mechanics of the mind have been

externalized, now other, intuitive factors are being looked

for to find new forms. You've made an interesting statement:

"Poetry is the language of the future." Whether in words.

as a visual phenomenon, music or otherwise, that appeals to

us in a different way, not only in a discursive way. I think

there is a connection with another trend, which I have

always found interesting with computers, they show the

limits of predictability. And it becomes more and more

apparent in the intensive involvement with computers that

there is something to our consciousness, our intuition, our

Aufmerksamkeit, on which with predictability we cannot get

the knack . That also in nature there are many phenomena

that cannot be predicted, the whole area of quantum physics

shows that there might be a lot. I could imagine that by

testing the possibilities of predictability it'll become

apparent, that the predictable is only a small island in the

ocean of the unpredictable. That this wave of chaos and

determinist chaos was only a ripple in advance of the real

waves. Chaos is only unpredictable in practical terms, it's

chaotic because of a lack of knowledge. But their might be

vast areas of pure coincidence, of actual unpredictabilty,

and these areas might not only be shown by negative proofs

in physics or logics or mathematics, but through new

procedures, autonomous agents that do something quite

different, things that talk to us, become apparent through

style.

The reason why a line of a poem has such an impression on

us, isn't that we can comprehend the matter discursively,

and yet it does. But why a "Jacobsen" chair is more beautiful

than another chair, we cannot calculate, its just a "look!".

We don't only perceive through calculations, the mind

isn't only a computer that has intuitive abilities through

incredibly complicated calculations, but there is something

else as well. And we'll only reach that, if we eat through

this semolina mountain of predictability. In this sense I

understand the dictum "poetry is the language of the

future".

D.F.: The myth of the acting subject collapses, because as

soon as one knows that one reaches it only through

introspection, it becomes apparent that even on the level

of thinking, of thought, there can't be anything like an

acting subject. It's impossible to discern whether one has

been thought or whether one thinks. It is after all a common

expression to say: an idea has come to my mind. Why does

intuition generally have such a bad press? I think, it has

to do with the fact that our culture has a cult of control.

And to expand calculability as far as possible has a

democratic element as well. In the sense that others can

follow it logically. So, if you can think what you want to

prove to me, then I've got to be able to think it too,

provided I follow the same rules. Whereas intuition has

these surprising encounters in manifest forms such as in

art, where I realize: oh, I'm not alone in the world.

Intuition is something vulnerable, and everybody cultivates

it differently. In our culture there are hardly any

institutions for instance which establish the refinement of

sensuousness as a common goal. Why is one so afraid to

recognize intuition as a way of understanding?

[...]

G.F.: I find it very important to clarify this question.

Before the Enlightenment intuition could be coming back with

a vengeance and to break its power, it was absolutely

necessary to insist on rationality, on public

demonstrability. So that nothing counts that can't be

demonstrated.

As, however, intuitive methods can't be demonstrated, one

has to rely on the credibility, on the truthfulness of the

person. The style has to show whether the person can be

trusted or not. This is something we have to learn again..

But during the high times of absolutism and dogmatised faith

these intuitive methods were strongly used in order to

maintain a power structure. Against that, it needed

strictest hygiene, so the whole business of intuition had to

kick the bucket. Now we suffer from the consequences, but on

the other hand we have profited enormously by these hygienic

purifications and are now in the privileged position to be

able from a secure level of rationality to readmit

intuition. Compared to the beginnings of the Enlightenment

we are in a totally different situation, in an enviable

situation.

K.B.: What I think is important in the report on the economy

of Aufmerksamkeit is the reference to hedonism as a

solution of specific social, cultural and ecological

problems.

G.F.: A basic statement on ethics: I claim that all in all

people act quite morally. Society is very active in

mobilizing moral pressure. But people certainly aren't

moral, in the sense that they follow an abstract rule - "you

must".

That's why the fears haven't come true that people get

immoral if their dogmatic faith and the threat of hell

vanish. Inasmuch as people are moral, they are moral out of

wisdom.

Because they realize it's better for them. It's an effort

and not economical, and that's why people who know how to

defend their interests usually don't lie much. Ethics can be

very rational in the sense that one understands it to be

clever. Even a saint appreciates his way of living as the

most clever and the best thing in his own way of thinking.

If you include vanity, it seems to be the case, that in a

hedonistic way of thinking it can be wise to act ethically.

It's possible to show that egoism and altruism are not

really that far apart.

A conception of the world as a cosmos of many single,

attentive (aufmerksam) beings or souls, in the sense of a

monadology, with the aim to attract as much Aufmerksamkeit

as possible on oneself. In the sense that one is granted

hospitality in as many of these other worlds as possible and

basks in this other Aufmerksamkeit, a metaphysically

extended and sublimated personal vanity - to put it very

carefully.

That could really be an ecological conception of the world,

in that one reflects, vis á vis every single being, what

passes over into one's own world. Somebody who entertains

this conception of the world treats his surroundings quite

differently, It wouldn't be a conception of the world with a

"you must" as a priority, but first of all it would be an

adventure to settle down in this conception of the world.