{"id":50,"date":"2013-01-25T06:12:45","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T14:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/?p=50"},"modified":"2013-01-25T12:16:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T20:16:10","slug":"50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/2013\/01\/25\/50\/","title":{"rendered":"Stuff vs Fluff"},"content":{"rendered":"

The onset of the Digital Age has dramatically altered our perception of the material and immaterial.\u00a0 For the first time in human history, we have placed a greater premium on ideas and information over what scholar Richard A. Lanham simply refers to as “stuff.”\u00a0 This paradigm shift has largely replaced the norms of the Industrial Age: an age characterized by factories and production.\u00a0 In his book The Economics of Attention<\/em><\/a>, Richard A. Lanham observes this shift and discusses the impacts and implications it has on modern society.<\/p>\n

Throughout the first chapter of his book, Lanham discusses the differences between ‘stuff’ and ‘fluff’.\u00a0 Stuff refers to material items while fluff includes thoughts, ideas, raw data, and information.\u00a0 In our waking lives we are constantly bombarded by information.\u00a0 Our brains cannot possibly process the sheer amount of data that we encounter on a day-to-day basis.\u00a0 Our attention spans can help us scale down the data that we perceive.\u00a0 It acts as a sort of filter.<\/p>\n

\"SellTheSizzle\"<\/a>

Elmer Wheeler<\/p><\/div>\n

Lanham discusses that our attention spans are easily susceptible to the “centripetal attention structures” created by the media and company advertisements.\u00a0 Even though we are largely obsessed with the stuff portrayed in commercials, a key point that Lanham raises is that it’s all of the fluff surrounding it that entices us to it in the first place.\u00a0 To draw from legendary American salesman, Elmer Wheeler, you do much better by selling the sounds and smells of cooking a hotdog instead of selling the hotdog itself.\u00a0 In other words, you ‘sell the sizzle<\/a>‘ because otherwise you are just selling dead pig.<\/p>\n

While sounds and smells of hotdogs cooking on a grill may stimulate our senses enough to get us to buy the hotdog, companies have gone a step further to compete for our attention.\u00a0 Lanham discusses that companies place more effort into the fluff surrounding their product than they do to the product itself.\u00a0 He points towards the manufacturing of cars as a prime example.\u00a0 In that market, design is everything.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter that the combustible engine has largely remained unchanged from the time it was invented. \u00a0 If you hire a good enough graphic designer, the car will sell based on its style as opposed to its substance.<\/p>\n

“Design” is our name for the interface where stuff meets fluff. The design of a product invites us to attend to it in a particularway, to pay a certain type of attention to it. Design tells us not about stuff per se but what we think about stuff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The shift to into the Digital Age (or the Information Age) from the Industrial Age has been largely responsible for the dramatic shift in our economy.\u00a0 The United States transitioned from factory-based, industrial production to specializing in intelligence and information distribution.\u00a0 Now, the major jobs are created in the service sector – not in the assembly line.\u00a0 It is the reason why places like Detroit and the rust belt have crumbled and the Silicon Valley have boomed.<\/p>\n

The toggling between stuff and fluff is what the economy of attention rests upon.\u00a0 Lanham provides many examples of this oscillation between reality and our ability to perceive it.\u00a0 Artists in general toggle between the world of stuff and fluff.\u00a0 Digital artists use data (fluff) in the form of algorithms to make their artwork (stuff).\u00a0 “You see the ‘information’ in the image, the mathematics that inheres the image.”\u00a0 Paradoxically, the fluff becomes<\/em> the stuff. Another example he gave was playing video games.\u00a0 You process the information in the world of the game while you simultaneously control what goes on from your controller.<\/p>\n

\"alex-grey-net-of-being\"<\/a>

“Net of Being” is a piece by visual artist, Alex Grey. Grey used a logarithm to create the ornate spiral patterns featured in the painting. Plus, I like Tool.<\/p><\/div>\n

A liberal education matters in a world of fluff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rhetoric, according to Lanham, acts as a filtration system for the information we process.\u00a0 While rhetoric was first used in ancient Greece to argue cases, its modern context may enable us to better differentiate the blurred lines between stuff and fluff.\u00a0 However, he uses the term “stylistic filtration” which carries with it the implication that the filter can be morphed by ideals and societal norms.\u00a0 Since culture is our operating system, by extension, this even applies to how we question the material we are presented.\u00a0 This is where a liberal education may prove invaluable.\u00a0 Lanham argues that it “creates attention structures to teach us how to attend to the world, [and] must be central to acting in the world as well as to contemplating it.”\u00a0 In other words, avoid taking things at face value because if Lanham taught us anything, it’s probably just fluff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The onset of the Digital Age has dramatically altered our perception of the material and immaterial.\u00a0 For the first time in human history, we have placed a greater premium on ideas and information over what scholar Richard A. Lanham simply … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":3,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"anouaux","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/author\/anouaux\/"},"qubely_comment":3,"qubely_category":"Engl 16 - Blog Posts<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"The onset of the Digital Age has dramatically altered our perception of the material and immaterial.\u00a0 For the first time in human history, we have placed a greater premium on ideas and information over what scholar Richard A. Lanham simply … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}