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> Twenty-five years ago, it was projected that, in an ever-more interconnected world, money would no longer be the prime currency, attention would be. While it
by c7b 4y ago
> Twenty-five years ago, it was projected that, in an ever-more interconnected world, money would no longer be the prime currency, attention would be.
While it does make for a good opening line, using a single prediction from 25 years ago that arguably worked out to some extent (probably not everyone prefers likes over cash), without giving any context on how many similar predictions were made in the same context, just feels a bit odd.
- teamonkey 4y agoMoney is still the prime currency. Attention is just a proxy for it. The problem is that, now more than there ever has been, there is a direct link between attention and money - in particular advertising - on a scale that is measured down to micro-engagements. To maximise profit you need to do whatever you can do legally to get your ad revenue (or whatever). Calling it the "attention economy" gives the impression that the problem is the consumer demanding an endless sea of changing content, whereas actually there's a profit motive to generate a lot of content in the cheapest possible way, to push it on people as much as possible, and the quality of that content only matters if you care about retention.