It is said that we have now moved from the information economy into the attention economy. The concept of the attention economy emerged gradually through several waves of thinking. It was first articulated in 1971, when it was said that “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients” (Economist Herbert Simon).
The term “attention economy” was more formally developed by academics like Michael Goldhaber in the mid-1990s. His influential essay “The Attention Economy and the Net” (1997) explored how attention would become the new currency in digital environments. These ideas gained traction during the early internet era when people began recognizing that while information was becoming abundant and cheap, human attention remained fundamentally limited. The dot-com boom made it clear that capturing eyeballs was often more valuable than traditional business metrics. The concept became more widely discussed as social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube demonstrated the massive economic potential of attention-based business models. The term really entered mainstream discourse in the 2010s and 2020s, particularly as concerns grew about social media addiction, digital wellness, and the societal impacts of attention-harvesting technologies. Documentaries like The Social Dilemma (I used that in my ethics course at USD) brought these concepts to broader public awareness.
The attention economy is a framework for understanding how human attention has become a scarce and valuable resource in the digital age. It treats attention as a commodity that can be captured, measured, and monetized. In an information-rich world, the bottleneck isn’t access to information but rather people’s limited attention to process it. Companies compete fiercely to capture and hold our attention because that’s where the economic value lies. Digital platforms like social media, streaming services, and news sites are designed to maximize “engagement” – keeping users scrolling, clicking, and watching for as long as possible. They use algorithms, notifications, infinite scroll, and other psychological techniques to capture attention. This attention is then monetized through advertising, data collection, and subscription models. Tech giants like Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Google/YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, and Twitter/X have all built business models around harvesting attention and selling access to audiences. Critics argue the attention economy has negative effects including shortened attention spans, increased anxiety and FOMO, political polarization (through engagement-driven algorithms), and the commodification of human consciousness itself. It can create addictive patterns and contribute to information overload. This may be why it can be challenging to maintain deep focus in our current technological environment.
Attention deficit disorder typically refers to difficulties with sustaining focus, concentration, and attention span. This can manifest in various ways, like difficulty staying focused on tasks or activities, being easily distracted by external stimuli or internal thoughts, trouble following through on instructions or completing work, and appearing not to listen when spoken to directly. I don’t know about anyone else, but this is a constant topic of conversation between me and Kim and I have always been addicted to focus and Kim, like many other women, tend to favor multitasking. Attention challenges traditionally arise from things like ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) or can also stem from anxiety, depression, sleep problems, stress, medical conditions, or even just being in environments that don’t match your natural attention patterns. But now that’s all changing based on this new attention economy that we have evolved into across the world.
A recent story in The Times described the ways we all relate to time. It said that we are either Monochronic people who “tend to live by the clock and are primed, at least during work hours, to prioritize obligations over relationships”, or Polychronic people, who “tend to give primacy to experiences and relationships that don’t always fit neatly into prearranged schedules.” If you prefer focus you’re monochronic, while those who are good at multitasking are probably polychronic. Where monochronic people can be rigid, polychronic people can be easily distracted and can have difficulty finishing what they start. Monochronic tends to lead to higher productivity, but the consensus is that polychronic can deliver a more fulfilling life overall. These are fancy names for what I suspect we have always recognized about ourselves and the tradeoffs life tends to force upon us. But now we’re all obsessed with our attention and how it’s been captured by our screens and created an all-too fast pace of modern life. We tell ourselves that nothing will feel as good as getting things done, but then we think of the cliché about people on their deathbeds never saying they wish they’d spent more time working. The aim, as in all things, is balance, being nimble enough to shift from one style to another as the situation requires.
But the attention economy is hardly striving for balance. One of my new gurus, Scott Galloway, just wrote about how economies are defined by scarcity, not abundance and that today, information is abundant, but attention is scarce. Wealth and power seem all rooted in the extraction and monetization of attention. The Magnificent 7 (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla and Amazon) have all recognized and have adjusted their business models (truth be told, both Tesla and Apple are falling behind on this as they cling to their product excellence philosophies) to exploit this attention grab that’s underway. The result has been that between the fast-paced news cycle, the breakdown of the societal frameworks that have given our lives structure, the advent of AI as it further slices away our moorings like education and professionalism, what is left for people across all socioeconomic strata is a whole bunch to worry about. That is, unless you have figured out how to surf the attention wave. Who among us does not ponder the eight-figure incomes by lucky youngsters that are suddenly tagged as “influencers” and more startling yet, the land-grab for what is passing as AI superstar talent wherein talented sports star signing bonuses pale in comparison to the 23-year-old with an AI sparkle in his keyboarding fingertips? Attention is being declared as the one and only currency that has any value and that is literally changing everything…and also thereby undermining the very fabric of our societal values. That’s right, value realignment is changing what we humans carry around in our core and in our souls and its not clear that some of us can handle this. Will human sensibility as it has governed mankind since its beginnings retain its North Star or will the very fabric of civilization be changed forever? I don’t believe this is an overreaction. It may well be an Casandra moment. A “Cassandra moment” refers to a situation where someone makes an accurate prediction or warning about future problems, but is ignored, dismissed, or not believed by others – only for that prediction to later come true. The term comes from Cassandra in Greek mythology, who was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo but cursed so that no one would ever believe her predictions, even though they were always accurate. Scott Galloway may well be one of our modern-day Casandras, an expert warning us about risks that are so strange to us that they seem unlikely…only to later materialize.
Galloway says that the four things that now shape our reality are digital infrastructure (communication has become an addiction, because it has to be to stay aware of where things are going), the algorithm trap (engagement metrics rather than knowledge – drastically lowering our standards for what constitutes being informed), “Brainrot” (rather than processing information we just absorb what we are fed), and the old standby, the Generation Gap (the young get social media and have turned it into a valuable skill set, while us older folks are doing what old folks do…disengaging). He says we are creating a “digital cage” where the narrative is all and reinforces itself (and that’s even without too much AI to help it do so just yet) and productive advancement matters less and less.
Big sigh……I’m trying not to disengage, but it gets harder and harder as the world seems to be going mad.Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. The modern definition of madness is more like a state of mental chaos or confusion leading to obsessive behavior taken to extremes, the loss of rational judgment and wild, uncontrolled emotions or actions. That pretty much describes me and how I see the world these days.