Richard Lantham, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, is an academic on the subject of prose and in this case, economics in chapter 1 of his book The Economics of Attention. Lantham discusses first how physicality means little in modern society. So many things are available to us at our fingertips that physical objects and locations have degraded in value.

Surgeons can cut you open from a thousand miles away. Facsimile Las Vegas casinos deliver Rome and New York on the same daily walk. You don’t have to go to the office to go to the office. You can shop in your kitchen and go to school in your living room. And, sadly enough, when you actually do go out shopping, one mall seems much like another. For what actually matters, physicality doesn’t matter anymore.

He continues to ponder how things that are physical in our lives are not precious or ever meant to mean anything to us on a personal level. He uses the example of the now disposable nature of cars. “Real men engineer brands not engines. And you don’t buy a car anymore — you lease it like a piece of software that wears out its welcome in three years.”

Lantham’s words on attention and its place in society can be found in the text, as well as in an interview he did for the University of Chicago Press in which he discusses attention as a resource.“The scare resource is the human attention needed to make sense of the enormous flow of information, to learn, as it were, how to drink out of the firehose.”

Like Lantham, many other contemporary philosophers/authors have written on the subject of attention in today’s world. David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest also considered the subject and discussed it at the 2m10s mark in this 2003 interview.

httpv://youtu.be/39UJuPogwiY?t=2m10s

Wallace alludes to the fact that there is little time or place for silence in America today and connects this with the fact that many people today simply do not enjoy reading. He likely believes the reason for this lies in the contemporary notion that our attentions should not be directed at one thing ever, let alone for several hours, a state that reading often requires.

Lantham connects the economics of attention with rhetoric. He states, “…it proves useful to think of rhetoric… as a new economics.” He continues to discuss the art of persuasion and in plainer terms, arguing with someone.

…You had to arrange [your arguments] in a convincing order. You first stated the question to be resolved, and then presented your arguments, the story you asked your audience to believe. Then you tried to refute the other side’s story and then you presented a summary that you hoped would stick in your audience’s mind.

Like Aristotle, Plato and Cicero, Lantham provides us with instructions on the art of rhetoric and persuasion. The previous passage outlines in what order one must present their claims with. Only if such an order is followed will your rhetoric be successful.