Abundant information makes human attention a scarce economic resource.

Evidence

Indeed, it was the psychologist Herbert Simon (1971) who first defined the basic terms of what is now called the “attention economy”: When information is abundant, human attention becomes a scarce resource and, hence, an object of economizing. Because consumers’ ability to parse relevant information is limited, producers invest more resources to capture their attention. Citton (2017) calls this the “great reversal,” in which standard assumptions about the dynamics of supply and demand invert. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 18

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the attention economy alongside Simon’s original formulation and Citton’s ‘great reversal.’
• ADDENDUM: Could extend the ‘Grafting & Growth’ essay’s infrastructure framing—here attention itself is infrastructure that the digital economy commodifies.
• XREF: Connects to Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism and the broader literature arguing attention is the commodity of the platform era. — connects to: Herbert Simon defined attention as the scarce resource that information consumes. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 35; Human serial attention limits make attention the scarce resource — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 137; Information abundance creates a scarcity of attention — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 7 (+6 more)

Related

• Attention is the scarce resource that powers the information economy. (similarity 0.92)
• Information abundance creates a scarcity of attention (similarity 0.91)
• Attention is becoming the hegemonic resource restructuring material production (similarity 0.90)
• Human serial attention limits make attention the scarce resource (similarity 0.89)
• Herbert Simon defined attention as the scarce resource that information consumes. (similarity 0.88)
• Attention is a scarce resource drained by information overload (similarity 0.88)
• Attention is a socially produced and politically governed resource, not merely a scarce one. (similarity 0.87)
• Attention is a finite resource whose unequal distribution produces symbolic misery (similarity 0.86)
• Attention scarcity can be turned into an asset through redistributed attention (similarity 0.85)
• Scarcity has shifted from production of goods to consumption of attention. (similarity 0.85)
• Attention scarcity is a capitalist construction, not a universal given (similarity 0.84)
• An attention economy requires reducing diverse attention to one quantifiable substance. (similarity 0.83)
• Market efficiency fails once attention becomes scarce, requiring corrective intervention (similarity 0.83)
• Attention has emerged as a site of political, economic, and moral struggle (similarity 0.83)
• Attention is socially and materially mediated, not just a scarce mental resource (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Attention is a socially produced and politically governed resource, not merely a scarce one. #complicates (0.82) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 19
• Market efficiency fails once attention becomes scarce, requiring corrective intervention #expands (0.78) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 177
• An attention economy requires reducing diverse attention to one quantifiable substance. #expands (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 228
• The attention economy treats attention as uniform when its quality is secretly variable #expands (0.74) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 345