S.Jeannot – Hybrid Assignment 04
In Chapter 6’s “Drawing the Line” Taylor argues, “[w]hile many hoped the Internet would help create a more varied cultural landscape, advertising dollars continue to distort the market by creating perverse incentives, encouraging the production of irresistibly clickable content.” Taylor describes this cultural landscape as an “attention economy.”
A part of the “attention economy” that has been created is “e-waste.” Having the newest gadget has become a symbol of socioeconomic wealth for some and it has created a lot of gadgets that have become outdated. The disturbing part of e-waste is that there are people all over the world who do not have access to ANY gadget at all while we here in America clamor two times a year for whatever new Apple product is going to be released. We have become such a consumerism culture that we don’t see the bigger picture. How do we dispose of all this waste? Where does it go? And how is it effecting our world and environment. As Taylor said, “What, one wonders, is the real price of a ‘free’ cell phone or a cheap reading device, tablet or computer – objects so easy to come by that we mistake them for worthless?”
Another of the terms in this chapter that she describes is “tastemakers.” Webster’s Dictionary describes a tastemakers as “a person whose judgments about what is good, fashionable, etc., are accepted and followed by many other people.” This judgement as Taylor describes only depends on if the actual tastemaker is successful in some way. Today, success is measured in a lot of different ways. a tastemaker may be someone on twitter or Instagram that has 100s of thousands or millions of followers. Education, artistic greatness or talent level still plays a part, but now one can be a tastemaker by not doing anything at all. This “attention economy” seems to cater to create a certain type of celebrity that 20-25 years ago would not exist.
