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Design articles:
The war for our attention
by James McGoram
2 February 2010
One Saturday afternoon, about a year ago, I cracked open a beer, collapsed into a comfy chair and powered up my new, gleaming, 42inch TV. Between an American college drama and an American small-town drama, on comes this ad for AUT, that eminent design educator based in Wellesley St. The voiceover, authoritative and male, speaks thusly:
“On August 6th 1991 a war started, the war for our attention. The birth of The Internet would rock traditional media to the core…”
It’s an engaging advertisement. First of all, this fellow is wrong. The Internet was born in 1969, by a division of the US military. The Web, the part of the internet that opened up to the wider world, that was what happened in 1991. The mistake is telling; made, as it is, by an educational institution and delivered with authority to a young, high-school audience, it’s a mistake that carries weight, a mistake that innocently re-invents our recent past. And it’s a mistake that anyone, aside from a nerd, would let slide. It’s easier, on balance, to simply accept the statement and carry on. Thus, the new truth: the Internet was invented in 1991.
The world is full of such trade-offs. It’s a big, noisy place we live in, and no one can be expected to be correct about everything, all the time. It’s hard to even pay attention for that long. So we make trade-offs, for convenience. We trade a little personal info for the convenience of using a website that helps us keep in touch with friends. Mostly harmless.
We trade a little bit of CO2 for the convenience of being able to drive our car whenever we want. Mostly harmless.
We trade the abstract hassle of DRM for what is otherwise a convenient online music service. Mostly harmless.
When faced with large-scale, abstract issues, or immediate personal convenience, we almost always choose the easy thing. This doesn’t make us bad, it makes us human. Millions of years of evolution have made us this way. Just ask Dr Schneier.
The premise, however, that a war is currently being waged for our attention, perhaps goes deeper than the advertising copywriter knew. As a web designer, my fortunes are very closely tied to what goes on, online. The Internet is responsible for an explosion of creativity and the sharing of information between hundreds of millions around the world. It is nothing short of the global revolution it is hyped as. In response to this massive international sharing, private companies, and latterly governments, have been looking for ways to limit and control the sharing – not for any grand ideological reason, but for one fairly simple, age-old and uncomplicated motive; the war for our attention is also the war for our money.
Like all wars, this one can get dirty. But war also brings change, rapid development through intense competition, moments of sheer beauty and sacrifice, and gives rise, occasionally, to true heroes.
What does any of this hyperbole have to do with graphic design? Well, as it turns out, almost everything.
Shining a light
Nestled deep in my chair, wrapped in 5.1 surround sound, I listen as the deep voice of wisdom continues:
“The birth of The Internet would rock traditional media to the core …Anyone could say anything to everyone. The amount of content now at our disposal is truly incredible, and therein lies the challenge…”
And that challenge, ladies and gentlemen, is what earns us our crust.
Graphic designers are born propagandists. We shape raw content into beautiful visual messages. We appeal to the emotions where words appeal to the brain. We are the spoonful of sugar for every drop of commercial medicine. It is our ability, our sheer communal effort, that helps lift businesses, organisations and individuals above the huge swamp of information that every ‘netizen’ wallows in daily. This is our first role.
Our second is more intrinsic to our individual personalities. We are, like it or not, the arbiters of style. Designers are avid consumers of other design – whether it be in haute couture or computer hardware. We have a tendency to create and lead trends. This is particularly prevalent online, where we not only design the environments in which millions of people spend time, we participate in them. I followed a Twitter conversation about the iPad yesterday that was like a watching a Ouroboros eating it’s tail.
Collective memory
All good things come to an end, even, after about 29 seconds, TV advertisements. To encapsulate the final thought of this particular ad:
“…The amount of content now at our disposal is truly incredible, and therein lies the challenge …without our attention, it might as well not exist.”
A line with resounding echoes of the great novel, 1984, by George Orwell, in which the past is continually re-written to fit in with the present ‘truth’. Where it doesn’t fit, documents and records are dropped into a ‘memory hole’ – a shoot which leads to a roaring furnace. So it is with many of our campaigns, slogans, images and Twitter conversations. Within minutes, it seems, most have been dropped into the communal memory hole, never to return. Few maintain the attention of the participants long enough to persist in any kind of meaningful way.
This can be to our own detriment. A clothing manufacturer, for instance, may infamously use child labour one year, but run a good PR campaign the next. With no collective memory, the first action bears no connection to the second. We are disconnected from the past, and so lose control of our ability to judge. As the party slogan from 1984 states:
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
We’ve entered a state where we perpetually live in the present. Just do it. Seize the day. Because you’re worth it. Our culture is hijacked by our memory-loss.
So who is fighting this war anyway?
To accept the premise of the AUT advertisement is to accept that we are in conflict with information. Designers are the chief strategists in this conflict.
Prior to what we now call Web 2.0, it was a battle fought mainly by competing businesses, vying for our attention, loyalties and ultimately, our money. That made it easy to understand. Curiously enough, user-generated content, file-sharing and social media have shuffled the deck, and the war is now being fought largely between businesses and, well, everyday consumers.
Culture, having been largely commodified in the 90’s, was suddenly democratised again in the 2000’s. The technology was allowing people to, quelle horruer, share their collective culture with one another – often without paying anyone for it. In any age but our own, this would seem entirely natural, wonderful and worthy of celebration. In an age where all aspects of culture are bought and sold, and where ideas are owned, it is viewed as a calamity, and anyone who partakes in sharing is verging on the criminal.
The ‘war’ has now become about defensive action – locking in customers, protecting music and movies with encryption, subscription plans, proprietary systems. More surveillance of customer behaviour.
For instance, does it bother you that one software company has an unchallenged monopoly over graphic design firms the world over? (guess who.) Does it bother you to be treated like a potential criminal when you watch a legally purchased DVD? Does it bother you that you cannot play your music on your computer, your iPod and even in your car without fear of arrest?
The counter-action to greater controls is, of course, to seek greater freedom, and many people take direct action to this end; hacking, unlocking, and file-sharing despite the consequences. These brave freedom fighters (usually teenage boys with a limited social life) are usually branded as pirates – although most of them are not inherently criminal.
Of course, none of us live saintly lives in isolation of all of this business. Most people tend to play both sides of the fence. On the one hand we’d be happy to claim copyright as creators of work, and on the other, we’ve no problem listening to a friend’s MP3s. I am not championing some sort of info-proletarian uprising against the corporates. We have to make a trade-off between culture being free, and having a gadget as cool as an iPod. There is, I believe, a balance – a peace treaty which could be struck.
But I also believe that we should be aware that this battle is still raging, and that there is a danger we will lose the freedoms that the Internet has granted, especially if we quietly accept the notion that shared culture cannot exist without payment. We should ask those brands that supply us with our tools, with our toys and with our media to engage in that freedom, and not to fear it.
This is the role which I believe design should play in this ongoing ‘war for our attention’ – to assist businesses to engage with their audience, not as adversaries, but as partners.
The parting shot
There is one last message to be found in that TV commercial. As the voice over fades out, white lettering fades in on a black background. It is a messianic call to arms, and it says, without further explanation:
The Ones who will be heard
Written for Design Assembly January 2010