ALIGNMENT When you pay attention to someone, you align your mind with that of the other person. This means you alter your mental and emotional processes according to your internal model of the other — in terms of her experiences, point of view, intentions, thinking, feelings, desires, will, actions, and/or perceptions. The better you can do this, the better you are able to pay attention. Such alignment is never total. You do not give up […]
In a recent post, I wrote that attention tends to leak out of circulation in the Attention Economy when it goes to the dead. As competition for attention increases, trying to stem this phenomenon and make use of the otherwise missing attention become increasingly important. A number of different strategies have developed: (1) Discrediting the dead for being dead; (2) Stressing the importance of now, this moment; (3) Channeling” the works of the dead by […]
I just finished reading a very well-written, ingenious, and thought-provoking paper by Eric Goldman, “A Coasean Analysis of Marketing” (Santa Clara Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-03) I’m flattered he tried to make use of attention economics. However, I do not agree with its conclusions, nor indeed some of its premises. I also do not believe he has taken what I have argued fully into account. Here are some cavils. Goldman takes it for […]
And the Winner is… myself! Months ago I announced a contest for general terms for; a) someone in the act of paying attention to someone else; b) the person receiving that attention. Reluctantly, I must award myself the grand prize, which is: a an all-expense paid visit to my own mind. (Convenient, that.) Term (a) is hereby declared to be AUDIENT, an existing English word meaning a member of an audience, but which I intend […]
As you may have noticed, I have been suffering, lately especially, from blogger’s block. Probably most people who ever started blogs do. However, true bloggers instead suffer from blogolalia, or perhaps blogorrhea, running off at the keyboard uninhibitedly. This dramatizes the simple fact that most of us are quite addicted to the use of language, to uttering utterances, whether or not we have anything to say. We like attention, and the easiest way to seek […]
Attention is asymmetric at times. It can flow out of the system, as when the living pay attention to the dead. I was very painfully reminded of this just recently. Ten days ago, a very close friend of mine died by her own hand; six days after that I found myself driving down the hill on which I live heading for the cemetery at which I would help choose a plot for her. It was […]
Back in 1968, Peter F. Drucker in The Age of Discontinuity [New York, Harper and Row] invented the term “the knowledge economy” to describe where he saw American society heading. By this he meant that more and more people were making use, not of knowledge simply, which everyone has always used, but rather that kind of knowledge that can be systematically acquired through taking college and university courses, as well as possibly by further specialized […]
There is only so much attention (available from other humans), and many or most of us want more than we have. In order to get attention one needs to express or do something — let us say, perform in some way. (This can be putting forth information, but that is not particularly what, e.g., a trapeze artist does.) The more attention we get in comparison with the attention we pay in putting together our total […]
I have added yet one more draft installment to Chapter 3 of my book, covering many topics having to do with how attention works, how we pay att to things that emanate from more than one mind or from no mind, along with how attention relates to reputation, recognition, information, time, style, etc. Also, a new draft of the whole chapter is here.
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 […]