What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention – Herbert Simon
Some thoughts on attention, since we talk oh so often about its importance in crypto investing:
1. A user’s attention is finite BUT — though a day is fixed at 24 hours, total attention time can increase with technological innovation and social change. Coffee — you could argue its spread created a massive net increase in society’s available attention.
Examples of tech innovation: faster internet speeds = more time for internet attention; airpods = greater ability to divide attention aka “multitask” (washing dishes while listening to All-In is increasing available attention). I guess saving time = increasing available attention.
Example of social change: how it’s increasingly common for people to use phones during dinner. Or having airpods in while interacting in public (even if sometimes perceived as obnoxious). Or rise in solo living, solo travel, all increasing available attention.
2. An influencer is an attention battery — they represent accumulated attention; roughly synonymous with “reputation” and “brand”. Anything Mr. Beast does is likely to attract peoples’ attention, but if he releases 50 extremely boring videos, attention will decline. And like a battery, he must then make good content to “recharge” his battery. Perhaps like batteries there is also a natural lifecycle and declining recharge capacity over time…
3. Attention leads to mindshare, and mindshare leads to market share
4. Intelligence is upstream of attention in the sense that intelligence influences how you pay attention. You can more easily capture a child’s attention than an adult’s, or an amateur’s attention than an expert in a given subject. This does not apply to all forms of attention, eg, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, you’re likely to pay attention when someone near you screams
5. Emotion is downstream of attention in the sense that you tend to have an emotional reaction after you’ve attended to something. Yet the stronger the emotion, the more likely you are to continue paying attention. So there is a feedback loop (same for #4). Attention + feedback loops is another interesting topics (briefly addressed below)
6. Attention is an investment. It has an expected ROI. It can be understood in financial terms. Notice how often we say “pay attention“. Attention has a cost, and a return. Your (paid) attention can achieve a positive ROI (such as getting your desired job because you prepared hard for it) but it can also have a negative ROI (don’t pay attention to your partner and they may very well find someone who does).
7. Attention is NOT a commodity. Each person can provide many kinds of attention, with different value, in different contexts. Tired-end-of-a-long-day attention is not the same as drinking-morning-coffee-after-8-hours-of-sleep attention. For the most part, one person’s attention is not interchangeable with another’s. An excited foreign visitor in SF pays far more attention to the Golden Gate Bridge than a local tech worker on their 200th morning commute.
8. Attention is relationship based (in both a p2p and p2object sense). A mother’s attention to her baby differs vastly from a receptionist’s attention to a walk-in customer. The attention you pay to your favorite TV show differs vastly from the attention you pay to a new piece of music. Or is context the better word here? Or both…
9. Curation is concentrated attention — the act of curating is the art of filtering and directing attention
10. Developed markets are approaching attention saturation — just like average income levels, countries like America and Japan are squarely in the diminishing marginal returns of first world attention. Developing markets, meanwhile, have much more upside for capturing and harvesting aggregate attention.
11. Attention is a feedback loop — both externally and internally. The more attention you pay to others, the more attention you are likely to receive from them in return. The more attention you pay to certain things, the more likely you will receive intrinsic rewards (or costs). Substance addiction is an example of negative attention feedback loops. Achieving career goals is an example of positive attention feedback loops. Same with friends and enemies. Again the theme of attention-as-investment…
12. Attention is Lindy — people, events, objects that have received the most attention in the past, are likely to continue receiving the most attention in the future. The Pyramids, the Bible, Napoleon, the Godfather movies…
13. Attention is contagious — viral moments, mob behavior, fomo — these are examples of attention contagion. Celebrities, marketers, politicians all intuitively understand this.
14. Attention is probabilistic — there’s no guarantee you can get someone’s attention, and even when you have it, you likely don’t have 100% of it (the amount you have is constantly changing)
Some random ass questions
What’s the relationship between attention and timing? Is good timing the “buying low and selling high” of attention?
Is love the best form of attention? This tweet is thought provoking: The framing of “Attention Economy” is limiting. I believe we live in a Love Economy. People now want to spend their time, money, and attention on things they love, not simply things that grab their attention.
What is the relationship between attention and time? Is attention applied time? Is attention:time like electricity:fossil fuels?
How will attention evolve? A thought provoking thread: https://x.com/anuatluru/status/1803089607560429843?s=46
Thanks for spending your attention here. Hope it had a somewhat positive ROI :) I can sometimes be found paying attention on X.