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Podcast: New Books in Communications
Episode: How Attention Works: Finding Your Way in a World Full of Distraction
Description: Stefan Van der Stigchel discusses how we filter out what is irrelevant so we can focus on what we need to know.We are surrounded by a world rich with visual information, but we pay attention to very little of it, filtering out what is irrelevant so we can focus on what we think we need to know. Advertisers, web designers, and other "attention architects" try hard to get our attention, promoting products with videos on huge outdoor screens, adding flashing banners to websites, and developing computer programs with blinking icons that tempt us to click. Often...