In a recent post I listed several social issues related to the so-called attention economy. One of these is deciding how to manage the digital record — the “breadcrumb trail” — of your attention while online. For example, Amazon knows what you purchased through them, NetFlix knows what movies you’ve rented, and all the big search engines have a complete log of every query ever issued from every IP address, together with the search results clicked on. (Yikes.) As Jon Udell writes, at least some people believe this status quo is unacceptable.

Continue reading →

In 1971, Nobel and Turing prize-winning economist Herbert Simon said, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” (Read more about Herbert Simon in wikipedia.)

Simon died in 2001. His decades-old insight holds real staying power: the so-called attention economy that he and others foresaw is increasingly becoming real. (It’s also becoming increasingly fashionable to talk about… search here and here. I feel so hip. Where do I sign up for Web 2.0?)

Continue reading →

I remember bragging to my mother in highschool about being able to do homework while listening to TV and the radio, eating dinner, and talking on the phone, all at once. And I really could! The Amazingly Undistractable Boy Wonder! These days, though, I have to purge all clutter around me — audio, visual, whatever — in order to focus. I rarely pick up the phone, I never watch TV. It is almost an allergic reaction.

Continue reading →