Subprime Attention Crisis Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet (FSG Originals x Logic)

He's the author of this weird fascinating book called Subprime Attention Crisis, which is a really good explanation of the business model responsible for our collective attention today.

The argument at the heart of the book is that the internet as we know it flows out of its business model.

I mentioned a little bit earlier that I can tell you about sort of like the dream and the nightmare. The dream has been kind of like the sort of laissezfaire vision of online ads... and the nightmare is that the marketplace may be far less functional than it appears.

Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, by Tim Hwang (2020).

This particular book in front of me here, Originals, one of my team members, Grace Miller, she went around her office and gave a copy of this book to brain and she called the local newspaper and said you should do a story about how video games are hurting kids. And they said, you're right, and we want to profile your child. So here I am with a lot of hair and no teeth just hooked on a video game.

And so, you know, it's funny about a specific example, I remember, so I had a moment in, gosh, it was 2011, I found out I got tenure. And so, you know, essentially a job for life at my university.