Podcast174: Relevance in the Attention Economy Part 1: Key Ideas

By Wesley Fryer On July 22, 2007 · · 3 Comments

This podcast is the first in a three part series focusing on Michael Goldhaber’s 1997 article, “The Attention Economy and the Net.” In this first part, which I have subtitled “Key Ideas,” I review some of the major points Goldhaber makes about the era of the attention economy he contends we are entering. The abstract of his article (linked in the podcast shownotes) is as follows: “If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as “the information age” suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions – stars vs. fans – and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality.” In part two of this podcast series, we will consider some of the implications of the “attention economy” for teaching and learning in the twenty-first century.

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