The Importance Of The Attention Economy

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The first person talking about the attention economy was Hebert Simon. He described it in 1971 as; "a wealth of information creating a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." But is was Michael Goldhaber that was the first person using the term 'attention economy' and offered a different definition (1997) " ... if you have any particular piece of information on the Net, you can share it easily with anyone else who might want it. It is not in any way scarce, and therefore it is not an information economy towards which we are moving. What would be the incentive in organizing our lives around spewing out more information if there is already far too much? [...] 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." We can't say that the attention hasn't been a scarce resource back in the day. This has always been true. Rhetoric, developed since antiquity, provided speakers with methods to captured and sustained the …show more content…

One person, famous or not, can give the illusion to pay attention to all individuals except he or she is not. Imagine your favourite actor having a speech and thanking his fans for their support, you will directly feel concerned. Because you have been paying attention towards that person he or she is filling your need even if it has been subtly created. Illusory attention can flow from one person to another. For example let's take Operah's talking show. Operah Winfrey is a very influential person that owns a very large audience today. Whenever she invites someone on her platform that person's temporally get's a huge amount of attention. Attention is huge part of her show's success. People try very hard to get on her show and tell their