Big Question 010 · Attention, agency & possible futures
CURRENT STATUS · UNRESOLVED · DESIGN INQUIRY ACTIVE
Can Humanity Reclaim Attention
in Time to Build a Flourishing Future?
Our screens can connect, inform and support us. They can also compete relentlessly for attention. What would it take to turn the scroll back into choice, relationship and constructive action?
Question boundary
Attention matters.
Attention alone cannot save the world.
BQ010 examines personal habits, interface design, institutional incentives and collective capacity without blaming individuals for systems engineered to capture attention. Digital connection is not treated as inherently harmful, and neurodiversity is not treated as a defect to be corrected.
Interactive thought experiment
Six signals.
Then the feed stops.
The Finite Doomscroll turns the joke into a design question: can a feed acknowledge difficult realities, preserve evidence boundaries and still return the visitor to choice?
Enter the Finite Doomscroll →“Scroll less. Live more. Remember the humans.”
Embodied taboo · interpretive prompts
Everybody does it.
Why are we afraid to talk about it?
Toileting is ordinary biology, yet it touches several things people often protect from public view. Humour can make the subject discussable without turning a person or body into the joke.
Privacy & vulnerability
The bathroom removes social performance. Being seen there can feel unusually exposed, so silence becomes a protective boundary.
Hygiene & disgust
Disgust can support sensible sanitation, but it can also spill into shame about normal bodies and necessary care.
Status & control
The body ignores prestige. The empty roll is funny because cosmic self-importance meets a need that is immediate, equal and unmistakably human.
Five evidence-labelled layers
From measured attention
to an imagined 2100.
Established evidence
Attention is finite. Interface design, social context, habit and incentives can influence what people notice and how long they remain engaged.
Interpretation
AkashicNET interprets attention as civic and ecological capacity: what societies repeatedly notice can shape what they protect, reward and repair.
Lived experience
The 3 a.m. spark, the lost minute and the sudden return to the body can be documented as experience without being treated as universal evidence.
Hypothesis
Finite feeds, humane defaults and deliberate stopping cues may help some people convert attention into reflection or useful action.
Speculation
A flourishing 2100 is a direction for imagination, not a forecast, promise or scientific conclusion.
Five observable design tests
Make attention visible
where design meets agency.
Finite by design
Does the experience end clearly rather than manufacture an endless feed?
Agency restored
Can people pause, leave, change settings and understand why content appears?
Action made possible
Does concern lead towards context, care or practical participation rather than helplessness?
Difference protected
Can neurodiverse attention patterns be supported without defining one ideal way to focus?
Power answerable
Are the incentives and institutions shaping attention visible, contestable and open to correction?
UNRESOLVED · PRACTICAL TESTS AVAILABLE