Bringing Attention to Human Fracking
A Review of
Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement
The Friends of Attention
Hardcover: Crown, 2026
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Reviewed by Jeremy Bugh
I recently went to a small concert inside a beautiful church sanctuary. Halfway through the opener’s set, he paused to thank us for listening, saying that “one of the greatest gifts you can give an artist is your attention. Because when we have it, we can feel it. And when we don’t have it, we can feel it even more.”
Our attention really is a gift, to ourselves and to others. Yet most of us in the West suffer from attention deprivation. The authors of Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, want to draw our attention to this epidemic of attention itself. Even more so, they want to start a revolution.
This book is written by “The Friends of Attention,” a collection of individuals who have been meeting for many years to discuss the importance of attention and the ways to cultivate it in our lives. The writing style is punchy and can feel like soundbites, saturated with bold statements about how messed up our world is and what it will take to change it. It’s written by revolutionaries, and that tone comes through. For some, that style might be a struggle. I confess that it took me a while to get into. But when I gave the book time, I realized that the authors have tapped into themes that we all need to hear. Attention, they argue, is more than just how we choose to focus our brain at a given time. It is really about how we direct our lives, what we give our whole selves to.
Citing The Attention Economy, the authors bring up the common definition of attention as “what catalyzes awareness into action” (15). On the flipside of this, they cite Bernard Stiegler, who says that “to pay attention is essentially to wait” (15). Summarizing his arguments, they say that “attention is a species of (possibly eternal) waiting” (16).
When we talk about “attention spans,” we embrace a view of attention that is focused on defining our capacity to “select for a task,” so to grow our attention spans would just be to learn how to “select for other tasks” (54). However, attention is about much more than how long you can focus on images on a screen or even words on a page. It’s about how we direct our whole selves – heart, soul, mind, and strength. Yet most studies of “attention” ask the subjects to analyze quick moving data on a digital screen. But as the authors point out, this style of “Candy Crush Attention” is an isolated, incomplete understanding of attention as nothing more than focusing on a task. For us to label this kind of “digital whack-a-mole” as attention is like labeling human marriage as “the legal framework for the administrative regulation of human reproduction” (68). That may be accurate, but it is tragically shallow.
Pushing back against this standard understanding of attention is easier said than done. Why? Because our attention has been bought by someone else. “The five largest companies in the world, each valued over two trillion dollars, share a core business operation: the capture and monetization of attention” (23). These companies are participating in what the authors refer to as Human Fracking. Like fossil fuel extraction companies, these behemoths developed business models uniquely designed to mine for our attention at the societal level, to the point where it now makes you an anomaly if you don’t spend copious amounts of time looking at your phone. What was once a nearly sacred element of our humanity has now been monopolized by attention frackers. They leverage this small device in our pockets to saturate one very specific kind of attention (our focus on one task) to the point where the more holistic parts of our attention have suffered (83). And if you haven’t noticed, that phone has slowly but surely shown you fewer people you care about and more flashy ads for the product that promises to finally bring you real happiness. We have sold our attention to the companies running this society. I’m not sure the payment we receive in return was worth it.
The start of most revolutions begins with those who are discerning and bold enough to stand up and say “It does not have to be this way!” (78). The authors argue that “people go to school to learn how to attend” (130). If we want to change the culture surrounding our holistic attention, we must also redefine what “school” is. The key is not just to revitalize our public schools but really to renew our appreciation of deep community as a type of school that teaches us to attend. Chess clubs, jazz bands, theater troupes all have a part to play in retraining our hearts for attention. But even the authors, who express no specific religious bent, admit that congregations of faith are potentially the greatest defenders against the fracking of our attention.
Something as powerful as attention fracking cannot be resisted alone. Therefore, we need not only to redefine what school is; we need to make new ones. “Every time we get together and give our time, mind, and senses to something or someone in a way that can’t be captured by the human frackers, we have a potential site of resistance to the Attention Economy” (141). While I agree with the authors of Attensity that clubs and hobbies can help, I believe the real fight will be won inside our sanctuaries. Yes, we must have meaningful friendships. But it won’t be enough unless those friends are bent towards a similar goal, sharing a similar vision for what the good life is. In this way, communities of faith may be our world’s best bet to push back against the fracking of our attention and ultimately our souls.
Jeremy Bugh
Jeremy Bugh is a Program Director for Baylor University and a PhD student at Biola University. You can follow him on substack at https://jbfoster.substack.com/ where he writes about the intersection of faith and culture. The focus of his creative work is to help others develop a biblical approach to engaging culture and embracing faithful presence in this Already/Not Yet Kingdom.
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