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1. The Battle for our Eyeballs – This Book helps us understand the stakes
   Ed Savage, a high-caliber organizational development professional, and a colleague of his, developed the “Rule of Seventeen.” Their rule is: it takes seventeen repetitions for a message to sink in. I thought of this as I worked through The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu; especially in the section of the book that gave the British precursor to, and then the practice of, Nazi propaganda. The simple message: the more fully a messenger can smother an audience with a message, the more fully the message sinks in.Why is this book worth our time? I have three answers:#1 – This is a book that provides a sweeping yet substantive overview of the history of the ways attention merchants have sought out, and taken, our attention. (propaganda; advertising; posters, print, radio, television, web, mobile – sweeping!)#2 – This is a book that reveals the unending competition for our attention. The attention merchants are always hard at work, and very creative in the ways they “hide” what they are doing.#3 – This is a book that is really well written – utterly engaging.The Attention Merchants has so many highlight worthy passages. Here are a few:The question is always, what shall I pay attention to?Over the coming century, the most vital human resource in need of conservation and protection is likely to be our own consciousness and mental.… the attention industry, in its many forms, has asked and gained more and more of our waking moments, albeit always, in exchange for new conveniences and diversions, creating a grand bargain that has transformed our lives.The real purpose of this book is less to persuade you one way or the other, but to get you to see the terms plainly, and, seeing them plainly, demand bargains that reflect the life you want to live.As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. We are at risk, without quite fully realizing it, of living lives that are less our own than we imagine.The goal of what follows is to help us understand more clearly how the deal went down and what it means for all of us.As. Mr. Wu led us through the arrival of early, and then the next, and then the next, attention merchants, I made this list. The progression:• Preachers – the Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention• Snake Oil Salesmen• poster creators (Paris) — the posters were practically impossible to ignore.• British War Propaganda (when “Propaganda” was not a bad word)• The Ministry for Public Enlightenment and of Propaganda – Hitler, Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl — total immersion of audience; “mandated” attention• from sponsors… to “ads”• from People to Instagram• from Magazines to Blogs to Twitter and Instagram• (the illusion of intimacy; the “pretend” self)• from posters to film and radio to television to computers to hand-held screens• and now, as part of the “revolt,” Netflix and binge watchingOne thing I noticed was the no-longer-with-us brands of yesteryear, like: Ipana, Rinso, and Zenith.And, here were my five lessons and takeaways from the book:#1 – First, pay attention to where your attention is going. Learn where it is going!#2 – Be wary of claims – all claims. (Who is the one who makes the claims? Why do they make such claims?)#3 – If the advertisers fail, then: who will pay for content (to be developed)?#4 – Schedule some digital Sabbaths; some intentional times to unplug.#5 – Commit to the “human reclamation project.”I am a loyal and appreciative fan of the work of David Halberstam, and I was pleased to see Mr. Wu refer to Halberstam’s classic The Powers that Be.And, this note: if you have ever wondered about “fake news,” you could read the sections of this book about snake oil salesmen. And, especially, the way that the Camel News Caravan successfully avoided all negative news about the health dangers of smoking.Should you read this book? Yes. If for no other reason than it is an utterly engaging book to read. But, reading this book will also make you a much more attentive and wary participant in where you place your eyeballs and where you allow your attention to settle. Getting that right can make a world of difference.

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2. Pretty Good
   Worth reading.Wu loses the thread a bit in the end, but overall he successfully makes his point. I learned about propaganda, advertising and the attention economy. While I think I’m relatively informed, I learned quite a bit about the philosophy that underlies the modern content era.Towards the end of the book, Wu switches to a discussion about fame and micro-fame. Useful to learn and strongly correlated with the attention economy. Still, the interweaving of the two ideas is poorly done; understanding the connections is an exercise left to the reader.Still, would I recommend this book? Heartily. By all means, buy the book. It was thought provoking.

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3. Great Read
   Writing histories of soft power – advertising, entertainment, persuasion, etc – has its difficulties. The historians of the hard variety of power can attach their arguments to a battle won, a piece of legislation passed, an election lost, something concrete where impact and significance seem clearer, more obvious. Yet the exercise of soft power is both commonplace and important because it often does shape our lives in a myriad of ways. But how do you prove such claims?Well Tim Wu has done a masterful job of tracking the story of a changing group of people, mostly men, who have sort to harvest the attention of publics and then sell that attention to a bevy of clients, mostly advertisers of one kind or another. The overall story isn’t new: there have been many fine histories of advertising over the years, and of its effect on culture and consumers. But Wu adds to the chronicle by focusing much of his argument on the modern incarnation of the attention merchants, no longer just newspaper publishers or admen or broadcast moguls but the ones who run the massively popular websites, say a Mark Zuckerberg, that wins our attention by offering an appealing service, a lot of supposedly ‘free stuff.’ Except of course it isn’t quite free, or rather it produces a saleable product, our eyes, that can generate huge profits. And the success of such enterprise shapes the whole character of the internet, just like the fact of advertising shaped first newspapers, then radio, and finally television news and entertainment.It’s the details of the story that especially intrigue. Thus I was taken by his bio of someone he calls the alchemist, Claude Hopkins, an adman early in the 20th century, whose successes and views had a major impact on the course of marketing throughout the next few decades. Wu has obviously done much research and thought hard about his findings. He writes well, very well indeed: the story flows easily, the arguments are clear, and his claims are always interesting, even if you might doubt his conclusions. So his suggestion a consumer revolt is brewing nowadays I liked, and hope he’s correct, but I doubt – there have been too many such claims in times past but we still live in marketing’s moment. Things change yes, styles of persuasion get updated, but the rule of the persuader persists: so the political consultant may have suffered some hard times in the past election cycle (because so many expensive campaigns failed abysmally), but the triumph of Trump (who doesn’t figure in the book) shows the huckster remains a potent figure in the American mix.The characters I found most intriguing here, like Hopkins, weren’t just selling our attention but manufacturing attraction, making products or people or causes appealing to the various markets and publics. Because in part our attention to the free stuff doesn’t mean our submission to the wishes of the elites. There’s another step, namely the crafting of the brand or the cause, making something that captivates or, apparently, fills a need. In short the real exercise of soft power came through the efforts of the adman, although now more the ad-maker and public relations counsel, what’s been called the persuasion industry. Sometimes I had the feeling Wu’s approach emphasized attention too much, attraction too little.But the real point is that Wu’s book provokes thought about a brand of soft power that is both ubiquitous and compelling. The only answer, unfortunately inadequate I think, is to get off the grid – don’t Facebook, don’t tweet, don’t watch television, then you can’t be sold. Except, of course, you then miss out on the free stuff.

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4. This book was thoroughly entertaining, accessible, and struck a great balance between interesting anecdotes and human stories, along with unbelievable facts and statistics. It could have done with more discussion of the future of advertising, but otherwise it was really excellent and comprehensive

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5. El acabado es de baja calidad o defectuoso, ya que el ancho de cada página es diferente y eso dificulta manipularlas.Respecto a WU, excelente.

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6. Great book! Excelent work on how our society’s attention is kept and sold as a commodity!

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7. An essential to anybody who wants to know in deep the story and the lógics of the publicity. Very interesting.

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8. As a 78 yr old who has lived through most of the years covered by this book it is a remarkably deeply researched insight into what one has experienced. Not only in the past but to-day. The book was published in 2016. I would have liked to have seen more analysis in the political attention merchants and the twittering and fake news we have to try and understand to-day!

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