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May We Have Your Attention: The Attention Economy

May We Have Your Attention: The Attention Economy

Shifting a bit from “words we throw around a lot,” this week, there was an article written in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, February 7th, 2021, by a man named Charlie Warzel that really got our attention as it relates to FIG. Warzel talks about his interview with Michael Goldhaber, who, in the 1980s, “outlined the demands of living in an attention economy, describing an ennui that didn’t yet exist but now feels familiar to anyone who makes a living online….. “His epiphany was this: One of the most finite resources in the world is human attention. To describe its scarcity, he latched onto what was then an obscure term, coined by a psychologist, Herbert A. Simon: ‘the attention economy.’” We’re really and truly sorry to disabuse you of the notion that we are able to multitask effectively. Sadly, study after study proves otherwise. “When you pay attention to one thing, you ignore something else.” Goldhaber prophesied.

So! May we beg your attention for the next few minutes?