The Attention Economy describes humans as having limited capacity to give attention & absorb information.

So online services have to compete for our attention. Information is plentiful but attention is scarce. So attention economy is the science of how scarce resources are calculated to gain our attention.

We need attention to survive. We had to catch our parents attention for food, water, & connection. We suffer the impact of our parent’s lack of attention or availability. You might wonder if there might be a relationship between the way we received attention as babies to our own habits of attention consumption in adulthood.

There is so much information out there: that creators have to compete for our attention. This attention can be monetised. Access to content websites are free, with adverts. With a subscription you can go without adverts. So you are effectively paying to have less content so you can direct your attention to the content you want to pay attention to.

Of course the content providers want us to pay attention to their content. It has always been so. But the the level of access on mobile technology and the massive amount of content available has grown beyond our comprehension.
Welcome to the digital step change of economy attention.

Copyright Adrian Scott
North London Counsellor Blog 2022
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique