Attention is a scarce, precious asset, and attracting it is as costly as a real ‘civil war’ on a universal scale. It is the commodity that dictates the value of all other commodities, be they material or immaterial, real or symbolic. More sophisticated mechanisms have been created in efforts to attract attention and tactics have been invented to make us passive, anaesthetised hostages. An attention economy has thus become a powerful field in the general economy, boosted substantially by new technologies for which attention is absolute capital. The ability to attract attention and the idea of disputing and competing for it is the condition that governs not only the strict field of economics but also everything pertaining to political and cultural life. Today, attention itself is the object of attention and scrutiny. It is this highly topical matter that is addressed by the articles featured in this issue of Electra.