A significant bottleneck is our ability to only pay attention to a certain number of things at a time. Decades of research have told us that things we selectively pay attention to are much more likely to be processed, because they enter into consciousness and memory. These things then impact us in a persistent way. For various reasons, the way that technology has evolved—including built-in advertising—has been about trying to capture that selective attention. Philipp Lorenz-Spreen [PLS]: We prefer novelty and surprise. Our attention guides us to that because it’s important to know new things. But there are other factors as well, especially if you think about the competition between sources of information. Also, negativity and other emotions such as outrage often guide our attention. There’s negativity bias; negative headlines are more successful. There’s another factor, in-group and out-group feelings, that humans are quite susceptible to. Whenever content talks about “us versus them,” it tends to succeed more than other content.