The Reaction Economy: Searching for Humanity in an Age of Screens

Why we’re living not in an “attention economy” but a “reaction economy,” how it hurts our lives, culture and politics—and how we might escape the cycle of reactions

Today’s world is driven by reactions. We are constantly prompted to like or comment on digital content—and bombarded with requests to rate everything from customer service to doctors. Reactions have become both an object of fascination—as seen in “reaction videos”—and a highly valued metric. What happens when the worth of every action is determined by how people react to it? Can we still act with purpose—or are we trapped in a loop of stimulus and response? In this groundbreaking book, William Davies argues that we are living not in an “attention economy” but rather in what he calls a “reaction economy”—a world where the kind of witnessing implied by “attention” has been displaced by the harvesting of reactions, and humans have become less distinguishable from nonhumans. Exploring the fascinating idea and history of reactions, The Reaction Economy asks what happens to our lives, culture and politics when everyone is constantly reacting to everyone else.

The Reaction Economy traces the concept of reaction through the natural sciences, psychology, avant-garde experiments and the cybernetic notion of “feedback mechanisms.” It shows that the relationship between two kinds of reaction—automatic and rapid responses and slower reactions rooted in sustained feelings of injustice or vengeance—cuts to the heart of our world today, including the explosion of reactionary politics.

Identifying and illuminating a central aspect of contemporary life, The Reaction Economy also explores how we might escape this system by rediscovering a capacity for action, spontaneity and imagination, beyond the compulsion to react.