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?)

Concrete examples: scientists, journalists, bloggers, and media stars all compete for the finite attention pool of their public and peers, through critical reviews, citations, viewership, and sales. All this attention adds up to real-world power. In the software field this is especially true: attention (recognition) is the shiny nugget that motivates every programmer, and the very best are commonly known as “stars”. (And sometimes even treated that way, with all the attendant ego issues you can imagine.)

So in a very real sense, attention is the primary form of income and exchange for this slice of society, with money typically following close behind. Furthermore this population segment is growing, according to Michael Goldhaber, because relatively fewer people as a proportion of society are producing physical goods and services.

All this adds up to some fascinating social issues:
1. Privacy invasion and monetization: Companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft log the breadcrumbs of your online attention habits, datamine the logs, and monetize, often by selling ads targeted to your behavior. Is this how we want things to be? Who owns this data, and how should it be managed?

2. Information Overload: the number of information sources competing for our attention is increasing steadily, and most of us aren’t dealing with it very well. As a consumer, how do you sort the good stuff from the bad? What tools and skills do you need to avoid drowing in distractions and remain productive? (I wrote about distraction allergies recently, and Clive Thompson wrote a fascinating NYT piece “Meet the Life Hackers” here.) And how do you discover interesting content in the first place, when you don’t even know how to describe what might be out there waiting to be found?

3. Publisher Overload: As an information publisher, how do you get discovered in this ever-growing sea of content? What tools and skills do you need in order to market and distribute your stuff? And how do you keep your head above water relative to competition, given that the water level is rising every day?

All this is worth further exploration, if only because sooner or later, it will impact you.