CONCEPT
Attention as Relationship
Stone's reframing of attention from a finite resource to be allocated to a reciprocal relationship to be tended — the foundational shift on which her entire critique of AI-era work rests.
The dominant cultural metaphor treats attention as a resource: a finite account from which we make withdrawals, a beam we direct at targets, a duration we measure in seconds. Stone insists this framing is not merely inadequate but actively misleading. Attention, properly understood, is a relational phenomenon — a reciprocal exchange between a perceiver and an object of perception in which both are shaped by the encounter. The quality of attention determines what the perceiver receives; what she receives shapes the quality of subsequent attention. Reframing attention this way changes the diagnostic question entirely: not 'how do we get more from our attention?' but 'what kind of relationship are we forming with the objects of our attention, and what kind of understanding does that relationship produce?'
In The You On AI Field Guide
The resource metaphor underwrites nearly every contemporary intervention in attention management. If attention is currency, the threat is bankruptcy and the remedy is budgeting. If attention is a beam,