Attention Economy
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An Attention Economy is an economic market that treats human attention as a scarce commodity.
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- Example(s):
- See: Attention, Excessive Technology Use.
References
2021
- (Wikipedia, 2021) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/attention_economy Retrieved:2021-1-15.
- Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. According to Matthew Crawford, "Attention is a resource—a person has only so much of it."
In this perspective Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck define the concept of attention as:
As content has grown increasingly abundant and immediately available, attention becomes the limiting factor in the consumption of information. A strong trigger of this effect is that the mental capability of humans is limited and the receptiveness of information is hence limited as well. Attention allows information to be filtered such that the most important information can be extracted from the environment while irrelevant details are left out. Software applications either explicitly or implicitly take attention economy into consideration in their user interface design based on the realization that if it takes the user too long to locate something, they will find it through another application. This is done, for instance, by creating filters to make sure viewers are presented with information that is most relevant, of interest, and personalized based on past Web search history.Attention is focused mental engagement on a particular item of information. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular item, and then we decide whether to act.
- Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. According to Matthew Crawford, "Attention is a resource—a person has only so much of it."
2020
- (Turel & Ferguson, 2020) ⇒ Ofir Turel, and Christopher Ferguson. (2020). “Excessive Use of Technology: Can Tech Providers Be the Culprits?.” In: Communications of the ACM, 64(1).
- QUOTE: ... The influx of hedonic online services (including video streaming, social media, video games) has created rather fierce competition for people's attention, in what is termed the “attention economy” — in which every minute of attention and engagement tech companies can "squeeze" out of users counts. To compete in this environment, tech companies, intentionally or unintentionally, have adapted practices that have capitalized on varying features of human decision making and brain physiology to cultivate automatic, and uninterrupted use. [1] ...
- ↑ Eyal, N. and Hoover, R. Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products. Portfolio Hardcover, New York, NY, 2014.
2001
- (Davenport & Beck, 2001) ⇒ Thomas H. Davenport, and John C. Beck. (2001). “The Attention Economy.” Ubiquity 2001.
- QUOTE: ... Rob and the rest of us live in an attention economy. In this new economy, capital, labor, information, and knowledge are all in plentiful supply. It's easy to start a business, to get access to customers and markets, to develop a strategy, to put up a Web site, to design ads and commercials. What's in short supply is human attention. Telecommunications bandwidth is not a problem, but human bandwidth is. At one point, software magnates had the ambition to put "information at your fingertips." Now we've got it, and in vast quantities. But no one will be informed by it, learn from it, or act on it unless they've got some free attention to devote to the information. Unfortunately, most organizations have precious little attention to spare. This leads us to a key principle of attention management.
DEFICIT PRINCIPLE: Before you can manage attention, you need to understand just how depleted these resources are for organizations and individuals.
- QUOTE: ... Rob and the rest of us live in an attention economy. In this new economy, capital, labor, information, and knowledge are all in plentiful supply. It's easy to start a business, to get access to customers and markets, to develop a strategy, to put up a Web site, to design ads and commercials. What's in short supply is human attention. Telecommunications bandwidth is not a problem, but human bandwidth is. At one point, software magnates had the ambition to put "information at your fingertips." Now we've got it, and in vast quantities. But no one will be informed by it, learn from it, or act on it unless they've got some free attention to devote to the information. Unfortunately, most organizations have precious little attention to spare. This leads us to a key principle of attention management.