Faculty and students from across the School of Liberal Arts, the School of Science and Engineering, and the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine gathered to hear D. Graham Burnett, attention advocate and Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science at Princeton University speak at Tulane University as part of the School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Speaker Series. In conversation with School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian T. Edwards, the conversation centered on the growing tension between technological advancement and the limits of human focus.
Burnett, whose work examines the scientific study of human attention over the last century, explored key ideas from his new book “Attensity!”, a collaborative project written with 25 authors. His own research traces 20th-century theories that conceptualized attention as having a “somatic period,” comparing it to biological rhythms like breathing or a heartbeat. According to this theory, stimuli at the threshold of perception would “drift in and out of perceptibility.” Burnett noted that this idea was ultimately overstated.
“I’m interested in how laboratory scientists sliced and diced human attention”, Burnett said, pointing to the long-term implications these experiments have had on how people interact with technology today.
As exploration into attention evolved into the 1920s, he explained, researchers began tracking eye movements by reflecting light off the surface of the eye. These early studies were not purely academic. Much of the research was funded by commercial interests, including lifestyle magazines seeking to design more attention-grabbing advertisements.
Over time, these techniques expanded beyond advertising. Burnett pointed to their use in military training and even in the development of early video games, describing a broader trajectory in which the study of attention became increasingly tied to systems designed to capture and sustain it.
“It’s an effort to maximize the human capacity to respond to stimuli on screens across long periods of time,” he said.
Burnett drew a direct link from these early 20th-century experiments to why and how our attention has been so easily “commodified” on our devices today. Critical of what he sees as a broader pattern in which companies use emerging technologies, Burnett focuses his research and teaching on the dangers of how these platforms, including AI, are built to extract and monetize human attention. He described a system in which attention is not only measured, but actively shaped and manipulated.
“This isn’t the problem,” he said, holding up his Smartphone. “It’s the profit motive driving our relationship with it,” he said.
Burnett doesn’t ban technology in his own classroom. He encourages students to think critically about its role and to prioritize education as a fundamentally human-centered experience. In fact, he often uses smart devices and AI in the classroom to teach attention literacy. Drawing on a recent article he wrote for The New Yorker, Burnett discussed the experimental course he taught at Princeton centered on attention. In the class, he allowed students to use AI tools in order to better understand their effects.
“I wanted the students to study AI for half the semester and then get a chance to talk about what is, in fact, the killer app of the attention economy.”
Burnett believes his role in the attention economy goes well beyond academic. As the executive director of the Friends of Attention, a collective project that combines research, a school, and what Burnett described as “attention activism,” he aims to change the culture. The attention movement, he explained, differs from traditional digital detox approaches, instead focusing on collective awareness and structural change.
“This is about achieving political anger, solidarity, and consistency,” he said. “Study becomes a powerful language for us talking about the formative dimensions of education.”