ATTENSITY! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement

Available for preorder now!

Dear Friends,

We have some VERY big news! We’re thrilled to share a new book, collectively authored by our parent Friends of Attention coalition, which is now available for preorder:

ATTENSITY! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, forthcoming from Crown Publishing, is a rallying cry for Attention Activists everywhere to push back against the commodification of human attention and to advance forms of collective attention that make us free. This book, the very first of its kind, is an ENORMOUS opportunity for our grassroots movement, and for Attention Activists everywhere.

You read that right: “collectively authored.” Joint authorship is, as you know, a highly unusual way to make a book in this day and age. Yet that's precisely what we've done. ATTENSITY! is the result of years of thinking, writing, and experimentation by the Friends of Attention — many of whom have played leading roles in the building of SoRA.

At the heart of the book is the notion of attensity. This is a new word, and also an old one. It surfaced, over the course of our collective drafting process, in the unlikely waters of early twentieth century experimental psychology — namely, in the work of the now-obscure Edward B. Titchener, an English-born psychologist whose emphasis on introspection (attending to one's inner cognitive processes) and structural thinking (taxonomies, etc.) soon gave way to more empirical experimentalists. But Titchener's near-forgotten neologism of attensity for the inner dynamics of human attention holds, we believe, great promise in our age of human fracking.

Merriam-Webster defines attensity as: "sensory clearness (as in differentiating between a sensation that is in the focus of attention and one that is not)". This is a fine enough place to start, though it merely gestures in the direction of what we see on the horizon.

In the following weeks, we'll be publishing a series of short reflections on what, exactly, we mean by attensity, and why we hoist it aloft as a banner for the gathering of Attention Activists far and wide. So stay tuned! And in the meantime…

We believe that the release of ATTENSITY! (ahem: the book) will be a turning point in the history of Attention Activism, and we intend to catch the wave of interest that follows its publication. So please tell your friends, and PREORDER NOW!

(Context: Preorders are KEY in generating momentum; they drive bookstore stock orders, and they're tallied in the first week of sales, which means that our best chance of getting Attention Activism onto major bestseller lists is by driving sales TODAY!)

This part is critical: all of our proceeds from ATTENSITY! will support the work of the non-profit Strother School of Radical Attention, so every purchase you make goes back to our community-facing programming.

In order to make the most of this exciting moment, we invite you to:

1. PREORDER THE BOOK HERE!  Buy a copy for yourself! Then gift it to someone else! Then tell someone about it! Word of mouth is SO important, and you, our readers and allies, are the best people to spread the word!

2. Request the book from your local bookstore. ATTENSITY! is available anywhere books are sold. Show some love to your local indie bookstore — they are important Attention Sanctuaries!

3. Request the book from your local library! (Also important Attention Sanctuaries!)

4. Follow us on social media!

5. If you have a Goodreads account, add this book to your “Want to Read” shelf.

This book is our BEST chance to make Attention Activism an international movement. We can change the world here — but it will take all hands on deck! So thank you: we are so grateful for your support.

Let's fight the human frackers!

In solidarity,

Peter Schmidt
Editor-in-Chief, The Empty Cup
Program Director, Strother School of Radical Attention

Czarina Ramos
Managing Editor, The Empty Cup