Analyzing Attention

Read/Write Web had a good Wikipedia page for that matter -- from which they ground this assumption:

Yochai Benkler addressed this in the Wealth of Networks.  He pointed out flaws in the theory that money would be the only driver for a solution, given the abundant means to produce filters through commons-based peer production.  And how within hypertext, when producers are filters, using the blogosphere as an example, we can scale without being overwhelmed. The social network is the filter.

This is, in part, because of transparency.  Oddly enough, transparency begets memory. We don't have to consume and process every bit of information that crosses our desk, but can fall back upon search and social discover.

Benkler, however, underpinned his analysis by submitting that the one scarcity is time and attention of users.  Classical training makes this an attention overload by the individual is full of all kinds of GTD and life hacking tips.  I personally don't believe you can engineer a solution as a former consumer of information, and the most important productivity and innovation boost you can give yourself is to let go of the stress.  Stowe Boyd summarizes that the opportunity is shifting Steve Rubel remarks upon some better practices:

To cope, we've developed a defense mechanism - what Linda Stone calls chunking things down for us into snacks that I told marketers to do the same. However, something at some point has to give. The only way out is perhaps with tools that make things easier for us.

However, much of the conversation around Attention is framed upon scarcity-economics and psychology.  Assume that attention is finite and the cognitive emotional overload of allocating it is overwhelming.  However, what if Attention is framed upon abundance-economics and sociology?  We have an abundant desire to give attention, and while time is short, when we give to others in groups, what we produce saves time.  Especially compared to going it alone.

Here is my hypothesis, that i am too stupid or distracted to pull in the existing research around to truly prove -- that:

• attention is abundant


• when you give attention, others give it to you


• the artifacts of your attention Comments