Attention: The Natural Economy of the Web

The title of the lecture I gave on Monday was based on Michael H. Goldhaber's speech transcript entitled "The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net".

A quote from Nobel laureate, Herbert Simon, sums up the core understanding of the lecture:

"...in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. 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"

In the lecture, we discussed how many products and services are becoming "free", but how our Attention can be monetized. (Also see Chris Anderson's article, and soon to be book on the subject: Free!)

In this world of free, value adds can become the primary source of revenue. This is the "Freemium" model which I've oft referred to in lectures. According to Wired Magazine's Kevin Kelly, the modern attention economy is increasingly one where the consumer product costs nothing to reproduce and the problem facing the supplier of the product lies in adding valuable intangibles that can not be reproduced at no cost. He identifies these as:

1. Immediacy - priority access, immediate delivery


2. Personalization - tailored just for you


3. Interpretation - support and guidance


4. Authenticity - how can you be sure it is the real thing?


5. Accessibility - whereever, whenever


6. Embodiment - books, live music


7. Patronage - "paying simply because it feels good", e.g. Radiohead's "In Rainbow's"


8. Findability - "When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention — and most of it free — being found is valuable."

The challenge to students of today is to start managing an building their Reputation today (in web terms, this could be their Page Rank around particular keywords and phrases), which over time could contribute to building Relationships Trust, Attention, and Income.

The next lecture, on Wednesday will be on the subject of Memetics.

Comments

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