Subprime Attention Crisis

In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. He shows us how digital advertising-the apparently unstoppable money machine at the heart of the internet-is actually at risk of collapsing, and that its potential instability bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing bubble of 2008. Moving from the unreliability of advertising numbers and the widespread fraud taking place within advertising markets to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers' attention has never been more prized, the true value of advertising-much like that of subprime mortgages-is wildly misrepresented. Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet and its precarious future. Book jacket.

Tim Hwang is a writer and researcher. He is the former director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, and previously served as the global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google. His work has appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , Wired , The Atlantic , and The Wall Street Journal , among other publications. He lives in New York City.