Stewarding Attention in an Age of Algorithms

Message for worship at West Richmond Friends Meeting, 2nd day of the Eleventh Month, 2025

Given by Julianna Smith

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:11-13

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

On the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated a few weeks ago, I found myself refreshing my NYT app to follow live updates on the event–how many people were hurt? What had authorities learned? How were national figures responding? How were average people responding? Should I be afraid for my friends? My colleagues? My students? Myself? One minute I’d be working on an accreditation report for the seminary, and then, as if I blacked out, I would find myself completely absorbed in my handheld screen trying to keep up with the mass of information cataloged in feed form on the site.

Now, y’all don’t know me that well, but here’s what you need to know: I am a bit self-righteous–possibly even a bit smug– about my relationship with the apps and websites known for their addictive properties. I disabled my Facebook years before the platform’s biggest scandals and Mark Zuckerberg’s riling up of the masses through his political contributions. I only use my Instagram account to follow a Dayton-area cat adoption nonprofit and a vegan donut shop that offers rotating flavors only publicized on the platform. In my mind, the algorithms–those data tracking systems that feed people content on the Internet that they like–didn’t have any hold over me. I was the master of my own attention until I found that I wasn’t. The algorithms did in fact command a part of my attention, and I was just as susceptible to being captured by my screen as others.

There is a truism that gets passed around progressive Christian circles: the Bible has more to say about the economy than it does any of the current hot-button social issues of our time from reproductive rights to issues surrounding gender and sexuality. I’d largely agree. And yet, the economy in our current age looks vastly different from that of any time or place in the biblical world. One of the most notable differences is the role of attention in our economy.

In 1969, reckoning with the downturn of a manufacturing economy and the growth in knowledge-based economies, Herbert Simon argued that the abundance of information “creates a poverty of attention.” (Bueno 3). In the 1990s with the dawn of the Internet Age, Michael Goldhaber reengaged Simon’s ideas of an attention economy writing, “‘there is something else that moves through the Net, flowing in the opposite direction from information, namely attention’ (Goldhaber 1997).” In other words, while information grows more abundant through the medium of the Internet, attention becomes more scarce, and, as a result, increasingly valuable. (Bueno 13).

It is not just theorists who recognize the value of attention. Tech CEOs are also clued in. Recognizing attention as a resource in high-demand already a decade ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote to his employees in a memo, “We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.” (Aylsworth and Castro 11). Nadella recognizes that if he and his company are to profit, they have to compete for your eyeballs and mine. When we visit websites or open apps, those sites earn money through the sale of advertisements targeted directly to us through our comprehensive digital profiles.

Over the past year or so my own attention has been directed to our attention economy–somewhat ironically–by that same news platform that owned my attention just a few weeks ago. As I thought about what to preach on for stewardship Sunday, I couldn’t escape the nagging thought that there was a connection between stewardship and attention. Mulling the connection over, this query then came to me:

With our attention becoming one of the key components of our economy, what is our obligation as Friends to steward our attention?

There is plenty in the gospels¹ to suggest that we are to thoughtfully steward our resources. Sermons often point to the Parable of the Talents or The Parable of the Rich Fool. Usually the principle of stewardship is applied to our money (as indicated by the pledge cards you received today). Sometimes the concept of stewardship is applied to the natural resources in our care or to our time. (To be clear, I think that it is right and good to talk about how we steward our money, time, and natural resources. It is through this community stewarding its collective financial resources that you are able to do the good work your meeting does.) I suspect though that, in as much as we think about stewardship, we rarely apply it to our attention. In an age where algorithms harness our attention to drive blinding amounts of profit for tech titans, are we not called to faithfully steward our attention like we steward other resources given to us by God?

Faithfully stewarding our attention is an act of justice. We recognize that our attention participates in our modern economy. Our attention can be exploited, and it can participate in exploitation depending on whose profits we build up with our attention. I say this with an eye to my own attentional habits and a sense of personal conviction. I have been asking myself, when I give my attention to that Dayton-area cat adoption nonprofit and vegan donut shop, am I enabling Instagram’s work to addict teenage girls, trap them online, and destroy their self-esteem in the process? When I click through websites, do I know whose pockets I am lining? I want to be clear, the answers to these questions are not easy, but I have become convinced that I ought to be asking them.

As we attend to stewarding our attention as Friends, we take part in our Friends heritage of understanding the links between our actions and broader economies. I am reminded of John Woolman who when traveling through Maryland and Virginia made conscious decisions to not participate in various aspects of the economy that ran on the exploitation of those who it enslaved. I am sure some Friends sitting here in this meeting have sworn off shopping at certain stores or buying certain products to not participate in unjust economies. When we are conscious of how our attention participates in the economy, we can better steward it for justice.

As I meditated on my attention, I realized that stewarding it well went beyond a commitment to justice. Attention is different from other resources entrusted to us by God we might steward. What sets our attention apart from other resources, is that it is more than a resource. It is the very faculty that allows us to know and experience God.

As some of you might know, my day job is teaching the Hebrew Bible at ESR. I teach the 1 Kings passage we read for today, rooting it in its proper place in Israelite historiography. If I were teaching my class, I would dutifully remind students that this story comes in the context of Elijah’s contentious interactions with King Ahab, his wife Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal. I would talk about how the writers are engaging in polemics with the prophets of Baal and Ahab’s foreign wife in their scribal crosshairs. I would tell my students that the story we read today fashions Elijah as a Moses figure recalling his sojourn to the desert and theophany he received. But luckily for all of you, I am not your Hebrew Bible professor today.

The story out of 1 Kings we read today is one that I and many other Friends come back to again and again for spiritual nourishment, and today I come to it because it spoke to me in my meditations on stewarding my attention. It is worth reading the short few verses again.

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:11-13)

Throughout the story, Elijah is attending expectantly; he is waiting on the mountain for the Lord to pass by. He attends to the great rock-splitting wind, ground vibrating beneath his feet, and to the blaze dancing before his eyes. Finally, he attends to the least attention- grabbing (notably the least visual) thing: the sound of sheer silence. It is there, attention fully directed in expectant waiting, Elijah finds God.

It is at this point I want to offer you a second query: How might you steward your attention in a way that facilitates communion with the divine today?

The songs we are singing today are all about creation. This is intentional and rooted in my own thoughts on the query I just posed. I have found that when I turn my attention to what some Christian thinkers have called the Book of Nature, it is then and there I find God. Like Elijah, I first attend to the visual stimuli–although admittedly for me it is not anything as grand as an earthquake or fire. My communion with God is most often preceded (maybe mediated by) birds and plants–hawks circling overhead, deer fern curling up just above the mulch bed in the spring, rain drops cascading down broad trillium leaves. When I stop and attend to the creation in front of me, it is then I find myself, as if I blacked out, communing with God.

In closing, our attention is not just valuable in an economy. It is not just important to attend to it as a matter of justice. Our attention is the very thing that facilitates our connection with God and allows us to receive spiritual nourishment. When we guard our attention, and harness it to wait expectantly for the still small voice, we find God ready to meet us and return more to us than any algorithm could.

1 The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), The Parable of the Ten Minas (Luke 19:11-27), The Parable of the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16:1-13), The Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21)

All Rights Reserved to Julianna Smith, 2025