I: Automated vs. Manual Alertness

The phrase "paying attention" implies that beyond just our time, focus is an asset. For us media producers, viewership, or name recognition (popular types of attention) are the fruits of our labor. Media marketers have always used forms of advertisements that attempt to invade an audience's awareness. We see their messages before we can look away. The pop-up ad (which has all but been eliminated by current web-browsers pop-up blocking software), was the culmination of forced automatic awareness (sometimes disguised as being urgent enough to enjoy the distinction of an alertness instead of what ads really produce, awareness at best). Before you know what the website you want to look at looks like, an ad invades the screen, forcing your attention on it for the time it takes to close its window.

For new media documentors who don't have an advertising budget automatic awareness relies on the more noble approach of targeting a potentially interested audience, but in doing so i believe documentary must follow the emergent trends in automatic alertness. One of the first steps in tracking the ways in which we can practice these sort of techniques is to identify the paradigm shift between manual alertness and automatic alertness.

Manual alerts are sent through channels that force the recipient to seek out the alert, even with the slightest effort. Let's take the example of the alarm clock. The alarm clock seems like an automatic alert, because it sonically alerts us to something when we may be unaware that it is going to happen (sleep, distractions). I don't consider this automatic alertness, since it was set manually at one point. The difference is agency. Using this logic, a website that requires agency to visit is one that is provides manual alertness. All documentary films required agency to watch, whether in a theatre or on video, an audience had to "do something" to get the message within. New media documentors could find a way to avoid this necessity for an audiences agency with potentially exciting results.

Another quick distinction, let's say something automatically appears in front of you giving you a link do a new piece of a work of documentary you had explored. You could argue that it takes agency to click the link, prompting the video. I disagree. I would analogize this to watching a movie on the airplane. You are provided with headphones, a screen and a movie, basically given two options: watch or ignore. This isn't agency it's a choice. With a manual alertness media type the choices are broader than watch or ignore. The very selection of a single documentary, or subject matter is one of a perplexing multitude of possibilities.

The new media concept of subscription is another grey area that i believe requires some distinction. If you subscribe to someones web page and are sent mail every time it is updated, could this be considered automated, even thought it required your initial agency to chose the web page? I still believe it is because you have no idea when or what you will receive. Unlike the alarm clock example (and magazines) the audience has no control once they initialize the process. The only control they have that can prevent subscription is cancellation (ideally) or to be receiving their alerts through channels that are checked manually (email programs that don't have constant connectivity and alerts for received messages. This technological gap will rely on users to automate their alerts by installing such automation systems, but i predict that it will be come standard on all portable connectivity (and most home connectivity) devices, as audiences grow accustom to automated alerts. Consequently, this will make new media that requires any sort of agency to find obsolete (and hence fetishized for nostalgia and its increasing rarity).