How our Attention Slips Through the Cracks with Money

Attention: A Scarce Resource

The Attention Economy

Thomas H. Davenport meets with John C. Beck for breakfast in Maine to discuss attention. After realizing that each one has many perspectives on the concept, they both decide to work together on a book addressing the situation in 2001. Though not the first to come up with the idea, both collect thoughts and sharpen the arguments with the help of various professionals and scholars dealing with the attention issue through their research and careers.  Working at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, both investigate the direction the attention economy is heading.

Attention is a resource, an asset, necessary in businesses to function and succeed. Through the reading that was somewhat viewed as a simple collection of thoughts and models, the two grasp several concepts and basic ideas. Being able to measure and allocate attention, they mention maintaining visual attention and captivating an audience with saturated visual attention. As a general population, we are easy to stray away from an idea or an advertisement. Understanding those psychological dimensions, becoming experts with the concept of reorganizing technologies, businesses can learn and adapt their techniques for retaining markets and consumers. Businesses can also maintain their employees’ productivity by realizing that the same monotonous actions will only drive a person away for that task. Otherwise, the result is attention slipping through the cracks, as well as money.

2001 – 2006 to Present: Still about the Allocation of the Attention Resource

The Economics of Attention

A more recent author Richard Lanham writes The Economics of Attention in 2006, which holds some similar ideas. Lanham’s argument points out the fact we are living in an information economy. Our economics lack the allocation of the scarce resource, attention. He also focuses around stylistic devices, stating them as “the tools” to attract and hold attention.
This sounds very familiar to my time in undergraduate studies. As a Computer Graphics Technology major, a large portion of our coursework revolves around understanding the human-computer interface factors, resulting with well-designed interface and the ability to hold an audience’s attention. Is this a coincidence? No surprises here, since our society is groomed for a large amount of short messages given to us in mere seconds.