Includes bibliographical references and index.

In recent years, a pronounced transformation of human attention has been taking place. From the epidemic diagnoses of ADHD to the calculable metrics of the 'attention economy,' a groundswell of discourses have intensified scrutiny on attention as a social problem that cuts across psychology, economics, art and design, media technology, popular culture, and the experience of everyday life. Kenneth Rogers takes the vital first step in the project of mapping out the complex of power relations that surround and support the proliferating technologies, knowledge systems, and social practices of attention. By unfolding the dramatic historical development of attention's successive disappearance, return, and transformation within formal scientific knowledge, he arrives at a better understanding how the vestiges of political power deeply inform the rise of new attention technologies and the pervasive social and cultural uses of attention in today's society.