Attention is becoming the hegemonic resource restructuring material production

Evidence

No, the ‘new’ attention economy is not going to ‘replace’ the old economy of material goods – for the good reason that it would not exist without these goods. No, hyper-attention fed by digital acceleration is not inevitably going to undermine the foundations of our capacity for deep concentration. But yes, something major is being reconfigured, in which the distribution of attention already plays a hegemonic role. It is quite right to hypothesize a reversal: what was an epiphenomenon – collectively paying attention to this rather than that – is in the process of restructuring the way in which we materially (re)produce our existence. Attention is the crucial resource of our epoch. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 47

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Srnicek’s ‘platform capitalism’ and Zuboff’s ‘surveillance capitalism’ claims that data/attention rather than traditional capital now organize economic extraction. — connects to: Attentional experiences rest on an exploited global material labor chain — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 559; Scarcity has shifted from production of goods to consumption of attention. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 41; Attention is the scarce resource that powers the information economy. — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 8 (+8 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The framing of attention not merely as scarce resource but as the hegemonic ‘crucial resource of our epoch’ that reconfigures material reproduction — a paradigm-shifting claim about what actually drives economic life now, resisting one-sentence summary.

Broader Connections

• Attention is the scarce resource that powers the information economy. #expands (0.85) — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 8
• Attention itself constitutes productive labor that generates value #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 148
• Attention is a scarce resource drained by information overload #corroborates (0.75) — Thomas Davenport & John Beck, The Attention Economy, 17
• Attention is socially and materially mediated, not just a scarce mental resource #qualifies (0.75) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 26
• Information abundance creates a scarcity of attention #corroborates (0.72) — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 7