Wikipedia defines “attention economy” as “an approach to the management of information as a scarce commodity”. Davenport and Beck claim that attention is “focused mental engagement on a particular item of information” (Wikipedia contributors, 2019). 

The scarcity of a resource denotes its value. Attention has become a scarce commodity based on the vast amount of information available. Average consumers are bombarded by exposure and networks. As marketers predict revenue by click-through rates, campaigns are increasingly targeted and commercial efforts have become precise. 

Crogan and Kinsley (2012) address the “economization” of our cognitive capacities on which such attention economy is based. They claim that a reconstitution of capitalism occurs with the emergence of “immaterial labour” where the notion of time shifts as an aspect of physical productivity to one of attention. As such, what we spend our time on (doing) and what we focus on are increasingly intangible yet, profitable. 

Crogan and Kinsley (2012) reference four ways that attention is “commodified, quantified and trained”; one of them is via the internet as a “mediator of contemporary intellectual and social activities”, which they identify as a “threat to our mental capacities” (Crogan and Kingsley, 2012, p. 4). Nicholas Carr (2008) agrees that longterm engagement with the Net depletes “concentration and contemplation” abilities. Both Harris (2016) and Morgans (2017) attribute the Net’s tampering with our brains via a calculated design of content delivery. We become addicted to the interaction. More importantly, according to Carr (2008), our brains are rewired in a manner that weakens the “higher cognitive faculties”. 

Attention therefore, represents shorter intervals of focus no longer associated with deep thought. So what kind of economic benefits would this type of attention manifest for corporations? If the internet promotes what Carr (2008) refers to as mental habits of “staccato” quality, then what becomes the foundation in such “attention economy”?

References

Carr, N. (2008, July 1). Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

Crogan, P., & Kinsley, S. (2012). Paying attention: Towards a critique of the attention economy. Culture Machine, 13, 1-29. 

Harris, T. (2016, July 27). The slot machine in your pocket. Speigel Online.

Morgans, J. (2017, May 19). The secret ways social media is built for addiction. Vice Magazine. 

Wikipedia contributors. (2019, March 4). Attention Economy. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 1:34, March 5, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy