As I read Michael Goldhaber more carefully - the more I feel that this is a very important article that sheds more light on the economic revolution than any other that I have yet found.
Here are some key snips that build the essential argument.
We tend to think, as we are taught, that economic laws are timeless. That is plain wrong. Those laws hold true in particular periods and in a particular kind of space. The characteristic landscape of feudalism, dotted with small fields, walled villages, and castles, differs markedly from the industrial landscape of cities, smokestack factories and railroads, canals, or superhighways. The "landscape" of cyberspace exists only in our minds, perhaps, but even so it is where we are increasingly coming to live, and it looks nothing like either of those others. If cyberspace grows to encompass interactions between the billions of people now on the planet, those kinds of interaction will be utterly different from what prevailed for the last few centuries, or ever before [ 2 ].
If you want to thrive in this new world, it behooves you not to mistake it for a place where the dukes and earls of today will naturally continue to prosper, but rather to learn to think in terms of the economy natural to it [ 3 ].
So, at last, what is this new economy about? Well if the Net exemplifies it, then you might guess it has less to do with material things than with the kinds of entity that can flow through the Net. We are told over and over just what that is: information.
Information, however, would be an impossible basis for an economy, for one simple reason: economies are governed by what is scarce, and information, especially on the Net, is not only abundant, but overflowing. We are drowning in the stuff, and yet more and more comes at us daily. That is why terms like "information glut" have become commonplace, after all.
There is something else that moves through the Net, flowing in the opposite direction from information, namely attention. So seeking attention could be the very incentive we are looking for.
Attention, at least the kind we care about, is an intrinsically scarce resource
Earlier I suggested that when information flows one way through the Net, attention has to be flowing the other. Now I want to say that it would be even better to think in terms of attention of some kind flowing both ways.
Consider an ordinary conversation. You could describe it as the exchange of information, but except in a highly technical sense that is rarely a very accurate description of what takes place. A conversation is primarily an exchange of attention. When you say "how are you?" for instance, you don't really want to know, as a rule, but if whomever you're talking with chooses to say how he or she is, it is more to get attention from you than to convey information. Even if this person genuinely thought you did want to know about her/his health, in answering, s/he would be attempting to pay attention to you. And even if you, in turn genuinely did want to know, the usual reason would be to pay attention to her/him.
Information, in the sense of something not previously known to one of the parties or another is secondary, if present at all. If I want your attention for any reason, I might begin by asking you for information, such as who you are and what you do, not necessarily because that is of great interest to me, but because it is a good way to get your attention. Children ask countless questions with this motive often patently obvious, and adults are not necessarily any different. Even if I am desperately searching for some fact that you happen to know, to get it from you I first have to get your attention.
So what really matters in every conversation is the exchange of attention -- an exchange that normally must be kept more or less equal if one party or the other isn't likely to lose interest.
In a full-fledged attention economy the goal is simply to get either enough attention or as much as possible. Recall now what I pointed out earlier: if you have a person's full attention, you can get them to perform physical acts, ranging from moving their eyes to follow you, to raising their hands, to applauding, to bringing you a glass of water, to handing you a sandwich, or, as is not uncommon in the case of rock groupies or sports fans, having sex with you (to cite a notorious example). Just as a parent paying attention to a child fills its material wants and desires, so a fan, that is anyone paying attention can feel an obligation or a desire to do the same for whomever they are paying attention to.
One lesson to draw is that material goods and the acts of producing them are only secondary in an attention economy. What is primary is attention in the form of hanging on your every word or gesture. Paying attention in that sense is not over when its over. If what I say to you today makes any impression at all, for instance, you will remember me as well as some of the message for some time, possibly even for the rest of you life. Even if you find what I say outrageous or stupid, it will be easier for you to tune into me the next time I come across your field of vision, however that might happen. That is, getting attention is not a momentary thing; you build on the stock you have every time you get any, and the larger your audience at one time, the larger your potential audience in the future. Thus obtaining attention is obtaining a kind of enduring wealth, a form of wealth that puts you in a preferred position to get anything this new economy offers.
