A key element of an economic system is the nature of the basic transactions, if any. So it might be worthwhile to attempt a brief explanation of the difference between a typical monetary transaction in the familiar (market-money-industrial) economy, and a typical attention transaction, of the type that characterizes the new economy. Here goes. A monetary transaction, normally involves two parties and an actual or implied contract between them (often in the form of a […]
Michel Bauwens’ P2P has EXCERPTS of my draft BOOK as book of the week on the P2P foundation site. The new projected title of my book is ALL THE WORLD A STAGE:The Emerging ATTENTION ECONOMY, Why It’s Coming, Its Deep Difference from the Familiar Market-Money-Industrial Economy, and What the Changes Mean For Our Lives. MEANWHILE, the site Blau Exchange has an INTERVIEW with me conducted by Paul diPerna.
Hoorah!Hoorah! “How (Not) to Study the Attention Economy: A Review of The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information” (by Richard A. Lanham) is now out. I recommend my review as important for understanding the Attention Economy and how to study it.
Note: The following is my contribution to a disucssion about war called underfire (Thanks to Jordan Crandall for conveing this discussion and inviting me. This is especially in response to the remarks of Saskia Sassen on borders, Alain Joxe on structured chaos and Paul Edwards on weak discipline.) As Immanuel Wallerstein once pointed out, old empires did not survive if they took more than forty days travel to cross from end to end. On that […]
A few months ago I gave a talk in the offices of Root Markets in NYC. In the audience, was an editor from Vanity Fair, who declared that the days of stardom are over. I don’t think so…… In the past few days: •A major news outlet (CNN?) reports that most Americans had probably never heard of Malawi until the brouhaha over Madonna adopting a child there. •Maureen Dowd in the NY Times (October 21, […]
Here is one more installment of this overly lengthy draft chapter. see the pdf for this third installment. The first installment (click for pdf) The second installment (click for pdf) Again, comments and questions welcome.
Now ready for downloading is the second draft installment of “What is Attention?” the book chapter I began putting out last week. I decided, owing to length, to put it out only as a pdf. (You can also read the first installment, as a pdf, or in this blog.)
It has been five years since the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York with its horrible loss of life. With it, even more shockingly, perhaps, came the disappearance of what had become an essential part of the New York skyline. And what made it all even worse was that it seemed to be an intentional act of suicide terror, by an implacable foe, that had struck from far away. The fact that […]
This blog focuses on the coming of the Attention Economy. Every so often, I shall remind new readers of what this term means. The basic idea is that we are moving toward a new kind of economy, wildly different from any before. An economy in this sense is system of actions and transactions of some kind involving scarce but desirable or necessary entities, with the multiplicity of such transactions intricately tying an entire society or […]
I would like to find a suitable, general. short pair of words for (a) a person paying attention to (b) a person receiving attention. I have often used the words “fan” and “star” to mean something a bit similar, but not the same. By a fan I mean someone who over time receives less attention than she pays, while a star receives far more attention than she pays. The more general words I am now […]