Dec 272006
 

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.

Aug 232006
 

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 […]

Aug 042006
 

Earlier this week I spoke to Andreas Weigend’s statistics class at Stanford University. In such a setting, one of the points I wanted to make is that attention is not absolutely quantifiable and never will be. Is my full attention numerically the same as yours? How could we find this out? Is my full attention at one time, equal to that at another, or if less, in what proportion? If I am aware that I […]

Aug 042006
 

“Gestalt” as I am using it simply means the whole complex to which you pay attention or have in mind when you pay attention to a person. For now, let us call this potential recipient of your attention the “target.” (There is always a person or person behind everything except purely “natural” objects, and even natural objects we understand only because of interactions with persons, so that such interactions tend to be integrated even into […]

Aug 022006
 
Attention is Fluid and, in Its Way, Quite Fungible

This is a partial look at the ways Person A can pay attention to Person B. Attention can slide among all these possiblities, even in one particular instance of attention paying. Often, we want pretty much all of this (and perhaps even more) from attention, and if we are skilled and lucky enough in our attention seeking we can sometimes get it all. In future I will explore other aspects of this fludity, and how […]

Jul 142006
 

I gave a talk “The Real Nature of the Emerging Attention Economy: Seen As a New Level in the Massively Multiplayer Game Known as Western Culture, ” at BayCHI* on Tuesday July 11. A version of the keynote presentation– JUST THE “SLIDES,” NO SOUND– with a few added explanations, can now be seen as a pdf . [A quicktime movie is also available (just slides without sound) if you want to see something more like […]

Jul 132006
 

What follows is a long extract from an op-ed by Katha Pollitt in the NY Times of July 12, 2006. It illustrates very well (a) that some people want attention more than money, and (b) how (other) people think about it. (I used to read Pollitt’s columns in “The Nation” regularly, and probably still would, if I could spare the attention. The review to which she refers was also published in the Times, and begins […]