rather than dismiss the article outright as some other comments do, I'll say that it conflates several concepts. let's break it down: 1) attention is a scare

rather than dismiss the article outright as some other comments do, I'll say that it conflates several concepts. let's break it down: 1) attention is a scare resource. this is a law of the universe (opportunity cost) until some technology or phenomenon figures out how to manipulate time. The article anticipates this response, but doesn't successfully refute it. 2) The article seems focused, towards the end, on the idea that the individual requires more attention. They don't, but this isn't the major issue with the attention economy (in my opinion). It IS an issue with our fame, celebrity, media, novelty and fomo obsessed culture though, granted. 3) a huge problem are institutions and cultures reinforcing attention/ consumption in a kind of cultural attentional arms race. this means that even if you don't care about getting attention, literal trillions of dollars and incalculable man hours will be spent trying to get yours whether you want to give it or not. 4) a general high level problem about whether this arms race (and the general ways we are manipulated into wanting to give attention) is psychologically adapting and damaging people into being unable to sustain attention, and in general unable to give attention to the things worthy of it (the last phenomenon probably is addressed in the article, albeit not explicitly tackling this source/cause, but maybe it takes this as assumed knowledge).