Tag: attention

The attention economy:

For all the sophistication of a world in which most of our waking hours are spent consuming or interacting with media, we have scarcely advanced in our understanding of what attention means. What are we actually talking about when we base both business and mental models on a ‘resource’ that, to all intents and purposes, is fabricated from scratch every time a new way of measuring it comes along?

Clay Johnson, writing about the nature of notifications in software:

Left at the default, we create an economy of sensational notifications, with the brightest minds of our generation trying to figure out how to get us to click on the next command for our attention. Can you imagine what would happen if they were instead focused on providing us content worthy of it?

Attention Economy. “If everyone has everyone’s attention the value of attention is nullified.” This is why we should save, invest, and be conscientious of the attention we give things.

Scott Berkun on information overload

Scott Berkun theorizes about information overload:

There is a notion the world is polluted with information. And that reckless publishing or creation is bad. This might be true, but that ship has sailed. We won’t be eliminating information from the world. Therefore:

Hypothesis: It doesn’t make the world any worse to add more information to it, since we can’t be/feel more overloaded than we already do.

That’s why everyone deserves the digital equivalent of a printing press. The more information the better, what I’m overloaded with someone else will cherish.