Reclaiming attention in the age of distraction

At the end of a long work day, do you find it heard to tear yourself away from screens? Or, maybe you are unable focus on the hobbies that once interested you. 

Most of us can relate to feeling overwhelmed by the nonstop onslaught of ads at our every turn. The modern pace of life has become overstimulating, all too easy to distract ourselves with scrolling and consuming. Is this just the nature of technology today, or is there something more sinister at play?

These questions are at the center of a new collaboration between Arizona State University’s Humanities Institute and the Strother School of Radical Attention, a nonprofit dedicated to what it calls “attention activism.”

According to D. Graham Burnett and friends, affiliates of the Strother School of Radical Attention, a multi-trillion-dollar industry using cutting-edge, military-grade technology and employing thousands of highly trained engineers is responsible for this systemic regulation of human behavior. They call this regulation “human fracking,” and their research on it led to the creation of the Strother School, a nonprofit dedicated to attention activism.

“Friends of Attention are not anti-tech,” Burnett, co-founder of the school, says. “We think tech is amazing, but a funny thing has happened where this extravagantly central, rich and powerful aspect of our being, our capacity to give our senses and our minds to ourselves and to each other and to the world, has been taken from us and replaced with a sort of weird ability to play endless whack-a-mole on a set of apps — and that’s not our attention.”

The crisis, Burnett says, is greater than what we might simply refer to as a “decreased attention span” or the inability to complete a list of tasks — it disconnects us from curiosity, care and play. It robs us of our humanity and our freedom, monopolizing our most intimate selves for corporate gain.

“Attention activism is like any other activist movement,” Burnett says. “It’s a way of saying, 'Let's get together because we the people have the power.' Attention activism is about insisting on having the world ... free and dynamic, and human attention that makes life worth living.”

In a series of upcoming events, the School of Radical Attention is partnering with the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University to provide tools against coercive digital technologies, a value closely aligned with the university’s nine design aspirations.

“To be principled innovators we must collaborate, bring in new perspectives, and find ways to consider the potential impacts of our decisions,” says Ted Cross, assistant vice president of principled innovation at ASU.

ASU staff, students and faculty have the opportunity to register for a three-part online course about the attention activist movement; the institute’s 2026 Distinguished Lecture, where Burnett will discuss his forthcoming manifesto “Attensity!”; and a workshop in April, details pending, which will help registrants actualize the humanities, including radical attention, as an art of living.

Cross shares, “Practicing principled innovation at ASU means cultivating values that power personal and collective character and lead to positive change. Finding ways to increase attention, not only results in better relationships, but the development of patience, empathy and humility. As we try to be less distracted, we can focus on the things that really matter.”