July on Farcaster

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https://warpcast.com/~/channel/july

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On attention and communities: In general, in smaller communities, there seems to be a focus on being able to provide attention. A lot more attention per person. Because one can provide more attention. And the likelihood of running into people who you ran into previously are more likely. There is a higher chance of communities forming with higher trust organically. Compare this with cities where there tends to be more people per attention that one has. Because your attention is finite there is often (though not always) more scarcity mindset that often develops around attention. So when someone provides way more attention than you're used to it feels off. The reason it feels off is because attention is scarce. It feels like if they are investing this much attention into you, there must be a reason that they are doing this, and that they must be seeking something in return. So I think if you are in a city and you have a scarcity mindset, and someone is providing you a lot more attention than you're normally used to, it feels really off. communities are fueled by continuous attention, and the number of people in a community, and the finiteness of attention in general, and the casual non-planning way that you run into people, and how that's much likelier to happen in a smaller community, contributes greatly towards how something like attention is held scarce

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I think part of it also is that looking at things like Dunbar's number and other things, because of our limited capacity to hold interactions and connections and memories at once, cities short-circuit our attention (our context window) and overwhelm us with more possibility than is possible to handle at once. Therefore, the communities that form are more human-sized, meaning fitting our memories and fitting our ability to handle them. But the infrastructure in which we're gravitating towards, which is cities increasingly, is way more and overwhelms us with possibility. Also, because there are just simply more people, and the people are transient (meaning they enter cities and they leave cities), it makes it harder to form communities that continue to exist. I don't think this is stopping anytime soon either because the number of people that are moving to urban areas is only increasing in search of more opportunities economically than ever before. While there will continue to be a small group that will look to move back to rural areas. The infrastructure for mass migration back out towards the countryside isn't something that I see happening in the next decade at the very least.

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The search for the ideal attention fitness of human settlements sparked some thoughts: We’ve replaced high quality attention with race-to-the-bottom convenience. The search for convenience in large cities is the false problem, borne out of overextended urban form. With most cities managed as corporations, they optimize for economics of scale leading to dumb urban growth. Grow enough, and it ceases to be human scale, but if the economic KPIs work no one questions it: it continues to grow, which erodes attention in new levels. Example: all our poorly structured cities cause capital investment into nothing-businesses that attempt to restore the attention functions of village-ness (e.g. getting around, meeting your future spouse) but often end up as friction-reducing convenience tech (cars, tinder), which erodes urban quality of attention even further. Friction aint the bad guy, it’s a keystone attribute for healthy attention. We need better KPIs. Ever read The Nature of Things? Been on my todo forever.

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Vinay Débrou ⚙️ pfp

Vinay Débrou ⚙️

@vinaydebrou.eth

interesting observations I think in the city, recurring offline interactions within our social(friends) and physical (neighbors) leads to clustering and trust building. for example in my neighborhood park, i see same people on the walk or people watching or playing. vs city places for high volume interactions - like market plazas, malls & concerts - there attention is scarce & trust is low. so there are usually social-villages within thriving cities

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@procoin curate fyi

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