Spotlightattention in 14 screens
    Full lab →

    Start here · 14 short screens

    Finish the sentence.

    The cat sat on the mat because it was …

    Tap a word.

    1 · How did you know?

    You looked back.

    Mostly at cat. A little at it and sat. A machine does the same, and calls it attention.

    Tap any word to see how much a machine looked at it while choosing the next one.

    2 · A machine, writing

    Every new word looks back.

    Thicker line, more attention. The bars are its guesses for the next word.

    Press Play.

    3 · The rule

    One pie. Always 100%.

    Tap a word to give it a bigger slice. The other slices must shrink.

    Goal: make cat the biggest slice.

    4 · How it picks

    It asks. The words answer.

    “was” asks a question. Every word wears a name tag. The best match gets the biggest slice.

    Looking for…

    Goal: find who was tired.

    5 · What it keeps

    The slices mix the words.

    “was” now carries a lot of cat inside it. That is the whole trick, repeated for every word, many times over.

    6 · Where the rules come from

    Nobody wrote the rules. It guessed.

    Show it a sentence, hide the last word, let it guess, nudge it a little. Repeat.

    0 nudges

    Tap Nudge a few times.

    An empty reading desk in a shaft of light before a wall of archive drawers.
    That was the machine.

    Now you.

    Your attention is not one thing. It has three parts, and they were mapped long before the machines.

    7 · Your attention

    Three parts.

    Tap a part.

    Petersen & Posner, 2012. Regions are a sketch, not a scan.

    8 · Compare

    Same answer. Different machinery.

    You

    1. Notice the blank.
    2. Look back along the sentence.
    3. Remember: cats nap; sitting on mats is what tired cats do.
    4. Decide: tired.

    The machine

    1. Match the question against every name tag.
    2. Slice 100% across the words.
    3. Blend the words by their slices.
    4. Score every word it knows: tired, 27 in 100.

    One word, “attention”, hides the difference. Keep both in view.

    An auditorium audience faces a screen showing the audience itself.
    Terranova, 2012 · the attention economy

    A feed earns money from your attention.

    Every look is counted and billed. For the next two screens, switch sides: you own the feed. You are the platform.

    9 · Three rounds · you are the platform

    You run the feed.

    The 100 dots are your readers. Each round, choose what your feed does, then publish. Your targets: earn 650 and keep your readers’ energy at 60%+.

    Round1 / 3
    Money0target 650
    Readers100still here
    Energy80%keep 60%+
    Rely on it0open by habit

    openedfinishedstopped to thinkrely on itleft

    Pick a move to publish this round.

    10 · What your ledger saw

    The bill.

    Earned0of 650
    Readers who left0for good
    Stopped to think0never counted
    Rely on the feed0open without deciding to

    One word, three machines

    Who is asking you to pay attention?
    And what does it cost?

    A formula that blends words. A brain with three systems. A market that pays for a look, and a habit that keeps you coming back. One word covers all of them. This page has tried to keep them apart.

    Go deeper · the full lab, 10 chapters →Lecture slides
    Vaswani et al., “Attention Is All You Need”, 2017.Petersen & Posner, “The Attention System of the Human Brain: 20 Years After”, 2012.Terranova, “Attention, Economy and the Brain”, 2012.Hansen, “From attention economy to cognitive lock-ins”, 2024.