Attention Economy
There is sufficient data in today’s internet age. Google search gives us the access to the vast amount of information just on a click. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social sites provide wealth of information about our closed ones or the influencers, who we love following. Ironically, a ton of information creates a distorted attention. Let’s see how.
The brilliant economist and psychologist, Herbert A. Simon, a Nobel laureate, had beautifully depicted the relationship between attention and information in 1971. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.’’
We are easily distracted from an ongoing conversation just with a single notification blink. That extra information distorts our current attention. How do you feel when the person sitting next to you start using the smart device in between an important conversation? Aren’t you hurtful? That’s the same way the other people feel.
Even now-a-days we consider using smart devices normal while having facial conversation. However, our brain isn’t efficient to focus on 2 things simultaneously. Probably we are losing on both the ends or the person sitting next to you is relatively less important then the one on the smart device.
Our brain is clever to make us feel that we are doing things simultaneously but there is a split time difference. Our brain can’t process things in a parallel manner. It does one thing at a time. That’s how we distort our own attention span.
The business model of all the tech giants runs on our attention span. Sadly there is no currency symbol to our attention else we would have been more conscious to invest our attention wisely :D. How about creating one?
