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Focus is cash in the economics of attention

Submitted by Merlin on March 2, 2006 - 8:14am.

Metroactive Features | Techsploits [“Attention!”]

Annalee on overstimulation, bad soccer calls, and the new currencies that comprise “the attention economy:”

But the researchers found something far more interesting. Subjects who made incorrect decisions under “noisy” conditions tended to have extremely high confidence that their decisions were right. They were far more confident than the subjects dealing with a noncluttered image.

“These results have practical implications for perceptual decisions in everyday life,” wrote the authors in their paper. “They predict an increase in high-confidence errors when decisions are made in cluttered environments….”

And, later:

Consumers and producers of the attention economy are the inverse of those in the cash economy. Attention producers are users, and attention consumers are companies.

Attention producers need software that works like the Federal Reserve. It should keep attention inflation low by making it easier to get the right information quickly.

Nicely put. Someday I hope to serve honorably on the Federal Attention Reserve Board.

in

What does it say about...

Submitted by Ed Furlong (not verified) on March 2, 2006 - 12:43pm.

What does it say about all of us that Annalee points to “spending far too much time reading Merlin Mann’s blog” as a symptom of highly granularized attention?

I find this phenomenon (high confidence of decisions made in a cluttered environment) the single most damaging behavior that affects my work and productivity. Example: I deleted an email that provided directions to an off-site meeting I had to attend today. No problem–I mapquested the address. Turns out mapquest does not give you correct directions for this location–a 3+ year-long problem as it turns out. Result: 30 minutes late to my meeting, never mind the near stroke I had out of sheer frustration.

Solutions–not sure what they are, but disciplined ignoring of email and phone interruptions, coupled with a strong “No!” ethic for committments figure in prominently.

Ed