[HN Gopher] The currency of the new economy won't be money, but ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The currency of the new economy won't be money, but attention
       (1997)
        
       Author : skaldic
       Score  : 219 points
       Date   : 2022-10-26 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | When swarms of bots are more valuable than human visitors, and
       | control capital, then the "attention economy" will look very
       | different.
       | 
       | Unlimited swarms of Bots can already make "helpful and
       | constructive comments" that are upvoted by other people, thanks
       | to GPT-3. 99% of comment interactions are passive, not an
       | interactive Turing test. And the bots can be trained to never
       | cuss or pick fights with people. Mission was fucking
       | accomplished: https://xkcd.com/810/
       | 
       | You won't see it coming, but the bot accounts will start to
       | outnumber people online until 10 years from now humans represent
       | a vanishingly small amount of content and "social capital". Just
       | like on wall street, the bots have replaced human traders. It
       | happens gradually.
       | 
       | And eventually, they'll control the money online, too, for
       | various tasks. You'll be working for a DAO maybe, but it'll be
       | some menial job -- the way rich people hired peasants throughout
       | history to do menial works. Until those are replaced, too, in a
       | race to the bottom.
       | 
       | That is what humanity is constructing for itself. Because AI
       | innovation cannot be stopped.
        
         | gammabetadelta wrote:
         | welcome to the new dystopia, it just like the old dystopia but
         | with bots
        
         | OkayPhysicist wrote:
         | AI innovation cannot be stopped. But the assumption that we
         | just have to hand over all the world's wealth to whoever
         | controls the AI is far from a given. In a world where human
         | labor accounts for a vanishingly small portion of what it takes
         | to support an individual, why should we structure the economy
         | around pretending that 100% employment is still necessary, or
         | even desirable?
         | 
         | Capitalism gets uglier and uglier the more the supply of human
         | labor outmatches the demand. In a world run by machines, it
         | would be very hard to argue that Capitalism's value out weighs
         | its cost.
        
           | svachalek wrote:
           | Have to, no. But who would stop it? Corporations are
           | basically the beta prototype for AI overlords, and there's
           | practically no complaint.
        
         | mistermann wrote:
         | In a very real sense, human beings themselves are bot-like,
         | from a scientific perspective anyways.
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | Money is attention though, and the reverse. Companies spend tons
       | of money to get the attention of customers. More content/stuff
       | means that getting attention is harder.
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | Herbert Simon, "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich
       | World", 1971:
       | 
       | > "In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means
       | a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that
       | information consumes. What information consumes is rather
       | obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a
       | wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
        
         | thenerdhead wrote:
         | To add onto this. The poverty of attention means not paying
         | enough attention to oneself. Which is a modern
         | "meaning/identity crisis".
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | oars wrote:
         | Great quote, thank you.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | I _wish_ it were actually information people were consuming,
         | instead it's really crass entertainment. It think Andy Grove
         | nailed it, it's about capturing eyeballs.
        
         | shanusmagnus wrote:
         | Thank you so much for this quote! The paper it's from is
         | exactly what I needed right now.
         | 
         | link: https://veryinteractive.net/pdfs/simon_designing-
         | organizatio...
        
         | monkeydust wrote:
         | This quote should be mandatory in handbook for how to write
         | good emails.
         | 
         | Maybe it's me but my tolerance for long, unwieldy and
         | directionless emails that require unecessary mental strain to
         | untangle has diminished to the point where I pretty much ignore
         | unless from high above.
        
         | abyssin wrote:
         | This is such a stimulating quote! It sounds like a promise that
         | it's possible to regain some peace in the middle of a deluge.
        
       | neosat wrote:
       | The dichotomy between attention and money (in this context) is
       | forced and not necessarily true. While it is true that attention
       | is valuable, it is valuable primarily because there is an
       | expectation that it can be monetized (either now or in the
       | future). There can be some other minor use cases for attention
       | being valuable for its own sake but those are a minority. The
       | primary goal is to leverage attention (eyeballs) for some kind of
       | advertising.
       | 
       | Attention , when it is hard to monetize it, is less valuable
       | (again in the majority case). A case in point would be messaging
       | apps such as Snapchat or WhatsApp compared to something like
       | Pinterest or FB newsfeed. Attention in one of those systems is
       | more economically valuable than others. It's true that WhatsApp
       | was valued high because of usage/attention despite having no
       | monetization but that was more of a strategic play to thwart
       | competitive threat as well as the belief that they could monetize
       | it in the future (as evident in the current direction that the
       | messaging apps are going in)
        
         | slim wrote:
         | it is valuable primarily because there is an expectation that
         | it can be monetized
         | 
         | your argument is circular. you are defining the value of
         | attention in terms of money, then you dismiss defining it as a
         | currency because (my interpretation) it is an asset or a good.
         | it's like saying that the value of an apple lies in it's
         | monetisation, if nobody buys it it means it has no value
         | 
         | attention has value because it's a resource. there's only
         | number-of-people-on-earth quantity of attention at each moment
         | to extract. if you don't extract it it's gone. you also need to
         | compete for it because there's not enough for everybody.
         | 
         | the good news is attention is probably the less discriminating
         | resource on earth. every human has exactly the same amount of
         | it*
         | 
         | *caveat : the fact you have an equal amount of attention does
         | not imply you can manage it optimally.
        
           | extantproject wrote:
           | > every human has exactly the same amount of it
           | 
           | Any evidence of this?
           | 
           | https://archive.ph/RkwhK
        
         | nicbou wrote:
         | There is the assumption that it can be monetised, but at some
         | point it feels like wishful thinking: get billions of users
         | then figure out a path to monetisation.
         | 
         | In reality, the right path is to establish a strong monopoly
         | and enforce a toll road on everyone. Everyone buys through
         | Amazon, but only sponsored listings sell. Everyone buys in-app,
         | and there's a 30% cut for the app store. Everyone dates on
         | Tinder, but only boosted profiles get dates. You get the idea.
        
           | Swenrekcah wrote:
           | Also if you've got enough attention then forget about direct
           | monetisation and go straight for political power.
        
             | fallingknife wrote:
             | Unfortunately, I think this is the future. We already had
             | one reality TV star president. We have a TV "doctor," and a
             | football player running for senate this year. I wouldn't be
             | at all surprised if a lot of social media influencers end
             | up in office. This is, of course, if the internet platforms
             | remain relatively open.
             | 
             | The other scenario (and I think more likely) is that the
             | internet media platforms will use the political power that
             | their gatekeeper status confers on them to promote their
             | own narrow interests. They will form their own content arms
             | which will be algorithmically favored, and cut the old
             | legacy media gatekeepers out entirely.
             | 
             | Pick your poison.
        
               | merely-unlikely wrote:
               | > Unfortunately, I think this is the future.
               | 
               | Not just the future, more like the status quo. There is a
               | centuries long history of business tycoons buying media
               | outlets for their own purposes. Social media platforms
               | and influencers are just a new flavor.
        
               | Swenrekcah wrote:
               | To some extent but the unprecedented reach and real time
               | factor of social media, along with the precise targeting
               | and personal data archives from Stasi's wet dreams makes
               | this really a new era rather than simply more of the
               | same, in my opinion.
        
               | listenallyall wrote:
               | Been happening long before the present century and long
               | before Trump. Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Bill Bradley, Jack
               | Kemp, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken, Sonny Bono.
        
         | metacritic12 wrote:
         | But attention has been much more monetizable than thought in
         | the 1990s. Nearly all forms of attention find some way of
         | getting monetized, and this near-fungibility is surprising.
         | 
         | Otherwise, it's tautologically true that "the currency of the
         | new economy is X, to the extent X can be monetized" for all
         | values of X.
        
           | neosat wrote:
           | You're not wrong. But that's not how the headline pitches the
           | article. It specifically says 'the currency of the new
           | economy _won 't_ be money'; hence my comment.
        
             | metacritic12 wrote:
             | Hmm your right that the headline says that. But I think to
             | read the article generously, "money" means explicit money,
             | like pay per read, or microtransactions, or pay per app.
             | 
             | To that extent, it is surprising how few explicit payments
             | I make per week on the Internet (Amazon, Instacart, Uber?)
             | yet hundreds of companies get cents of my attention
             | (Google, Facebook, TikTok, the tons of content marketing
             | companies Google sends traffic to, etc).
        
           | cptnapalm wrote:
           | Perhaps the dotcom crash altered some opinions with respect
           | to the need to monetize?
        
         | nonameiguess wrote:
         | It's not _always_ about being monetized. Politicians command
         | attention in order to win votes, and as most people running for
         | office were already rich and are doing it more for ego than to
         | get even richer, I don 't believe money is often the
         | motivation. Sports teams seem like another possible
         | counterexample, where being in a larger market with a more
         | prestigious history and larger fanbase can attract better
         | players in free agency, which may lead to more money, but may
         | not, and I again don't believe many of the owners, who were
         | already rich well before they ever bought a team, are
         | necessarily in it to get even richer. They just really like
         | winning and also have enormous egos. Some celebrities will
         | command attention even to the point of losing money. Witness
         | what Kanye is doing right now, though you can argue in his case
         | and probably others what we're seeing is mental illness, but
         | pathological motivations still count as motivations.
         | 
         | You might say these are a minority of cases compared to
         | businesses trying to command eyeballs so they can sell you
         | stuff, but I'm really not sure that proportionality stays the
         | same when you take the entire human experience into account. My
         | keenest memories of people trying to command lots of attention
         | are from primary school, and kids weren't interested in being
         | class clown or the most popular because they expected to be
         | able to sell you anything. Popularity was its own reward.
         | Commanding attention is plenty intoxicating all on its own.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | And you're making the mistake of equating money and power.
         | Power gets you money, but money doesn't necessarily get you
         | power. It can take generations for New Money to be treated as a
         | peer in some very important circles.
         | 
         | For all the titanically, record-setting dumb stuff Trump has
         | said, he was right about one thing. Filing for bankruptcy
         | (three times?) didn't make him poor. He just needed to collect
         | more favors denominated in cash than he gave out in order to
         | get back on his feet. Influence is not taxed, and for all the
         | noise we make about taxing the rich fairly, that will only slow
         | them down a little.
         | 
         | There is an exchange rate between attention and influence. Yes
         | those systems are fueled by money, but in the same way a heat
         | pump is fueled by electricity - highly leveraged.
        
       | darkteflon wrote:
       | OT but does anyone else find that pages from Conde Nast
       | publications such as Wired and Ars Technica constantly crash on
       | iOS Safari? I have a few ad-blocking and QoL extensions such as
       | AdGuard and StoptheMadness installed, and also use NextDNS, but
       | disabling these doesn't seem to help. Just me?
        
       | heldrida wrote:
       | Wrote in 1997? This is happening today, I see this everyday on
       | twitters, linkedins, etc.
       | 
       | Very good article!
        
         | narag wrote:
         | I guess that's the original article where this meme was born.
         | 
         | Edit: actually it mentions a book that was published one year
         | before.
         | 
         | I had never known where the expression originated, but surely I
         | heard about _the economy of attention_.
        
       | xkcd1963 wrote:
       | Maslow pyramid. Money is somewhere down at essential needs and
       | security, whilst attention starts at the social level
        
       | cies wrote:
       | you can only have 24h of attention in a day, and not many days
       | consecutively before you have to pay attention to your dreams
       | (sleep).
       | 
       | money, OTOH, has a near unlimited supply. and when you come close
       | to have it all you can persuade the Fed to print some more.
       | 
       | attention != money
        
         | cies wrote:
         | if you can somehow harvest other's attention; then the
         | comparison works again. you've upgraded from wage laborer to
         | capitalist :)
        
       | lifeisstillgood wrote:
       | The problem here is that Netflix / Disney / Youtube won, but
       | politicians aren't worrying about Netflix. They barely worry
       | about Youtube because it is less overtly political.
       | 
       | The currency of the future is the currency of the past - the
       | prevailing story, the mental model that people hold and fit their
       | evidence in.
       | 
       | That mental model varies hugely - it provides the difference
       | between Republicans and Democrats, between Autocracy and Liberty.
       | Polls show the biggest divide based on college education - the
       | models picked up or more likely challenged and discarded in
       | higher education provide a stark differentiator for modern voting
       | trends.
       | 
       | Control the mental model, and the facts hardly matter.
        
       | mjfl wrote:
       | > por que no los dos?
        
       | blehblahdoopy wrote:
        
       | mbank wrote:
       | I prefer Andrew D. Huberman's idea: Dopamine is the real currency
        
       | jscipione wrote:
       | On Halloween Day in 1517 Martin Luther put up his 95 Thesis on
       | the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He expected an
       | academic debate among clergy. At that time the Roman Catholic
       | Church had such a stranglehold on the courts, media, education,
       | and financial and political power that there was no way that a
       | revolution of ideas could even be imagined to succeed.
       | 
       | But thanks to the printing press this all changed as Martin
       | Luther's 95 Theses spread across Europe making Luther the first
       | widely recognized public figure in history. We call that period
       | the Reformation today and it was the beginning of the end to the
       | Catholic Church's dominance.
       | 
       | In a similar fashion, the NWO has a stranglehold over courts,
       | media, education, financial and political power and we have
       | entered a new Digital Reformation that just as it was inevitable
       | for the Catholic Church to lose its power during the previous
       | Reformation, it is also inevitable that the NWO will lose their
       | power in the new digital Reformation that is currently happening.
       | Only this time, the Reformation is global and it's happening a
       | lot faster.
        
       | cannam wrote:
       | What an interesting article!
       | 
       | It seems as if the idea is quite literal - that attention may
       | become what you need in order to support yourself, a currency,
       | not just something you can exchange for money somehow if you're
       | lucky. Unless I'm missing something, there's no physical
       | mechanism suggested by which this could work - who maintains you,
       | who feeds you, who feeds them, etc. I wonder what the author
       | imagined?
        
       | toomim wrote:
       | In 2010, I was a PhD student inspired by Herb Simon, Goldhaber,
       | and others, and decided to focus my dissertation on this topic:
       | https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation.html
       | 
       | This was the first approach to _measure_ the Economics of
       | Attention, quantitatively. To do so, we define a new type of
       | utility function, that can be measured with a new type of
       | experiment that you can run via large-scale A /B tests, and lets
       | you say things like "The new UI for Facebook is 6C/ per second
       | worse than the old one!"
        
       | denimnerd42 wrote:
       | people with ADHD are screwed
        
         | mjevans wrote:
         | Adblock and similar tools are legitimate medical needs.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | You can't pay bills with attention.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, the way you exchange attention for actual currency
       | you can use to buy fuel or build buildings or pay staff is via
       | advertising.
       | 
       | In the process we gave immense power to the largest advertising
       | companies, Google and Facebook/Meta.
        
       | 1234letshaveatw wrote:
       | Isn't this like when someone with 100 followers on insta wants a
       | free hotel room in exchange for exposure bux?
        
       | rkagerer wrote:
       | There was a comment here by a throwaway account pointing out
       | attention has always been a currency (think courtship rituals in
       | nature and the "world's oldest profession"). Wasn't mine, and got
       | flagged to death presumably for being too crass, but I thought it
       | kind of provoked thought from an unexpected angle.
        
         | justlikethenazi wrote:
        
       | t3e wrote:
       | I posted this on a different topic recently and it's apropos
       | again: I'm currently reading Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants"
       | about the history of advertising and can't recommend it enough.
       | It's informative, thoughtful, and well-written, but not a happy
       | or encouraging story, alas.
        
       | csdvrx wrote:
       | It seems to have mostly come true, with one caveat: attention
       | requires measuring, so surveillance is equally important as
       | attention
        
       | giuliomagnifico wrote:
       | The article is a (correct) premonition. Advertising companies
       | have already more than half of our day with smartphones and TV,
       | when we will use smart glasses and self drive cars the circle
       | will be closed.
        
       | silisili wrote:
       | Doesn't sound much different than the traditional 'time is
       | money.' Attention is time.
       | 
       | Just ask you can't pay for most things with time, you can't with
       | attention, either. But both can be converted to money, via real
       | cash or subsidies...
        
       | ElfinTrousers wrote:
       | I guess this sounds better in many ways than "the funding model
       | of the Web will be advertising".
        
       | gowld wrote:
        
       | thenerdhead wrote:
       | Attention = Time + Consciousness
       | 
       | Way more valuable than time or money. This is why
       | people(especially buddhists) say to "be present in the moment".
       | 
       | Attention management is crucial in being able to find meaning in
       | today's society. Neil Postman did a good job regarding Huxley's
       | warning to the world.
       | 
       | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74034.Amusing_Ourselves_...
       | 
       | There's even some unique ideas like Zombies in Western Culture
       | which talk about our lack of meaning and insatiability of
       | consuming others "brains":
       | 
       | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35523766-zombies-in-west...
        
         | trgn wrote:
         | Neil Postman is the sort of public intellectual that no longer
         | exists. Classically educated and proud of it, conservative in
         | spirit, tolerant in disposition. The closest we have now is
         | obnoxious dark web trolls whose attachment to liberality is
         | mere affectation.
        
           | thenerdhead wrote:
           | I don't know of any modern equivalent. Do you have any
           | suggestions or books to read?
        
         | rg2004 wrote:
         | I want to respectfully disagree. Being present in the moment is
         | not a result of valuing attention, but instead about letting
         | the conversation about the past and the future go. About
         | dropping the fears that were created in the past; the same
         | fears that have us worry about the future. It's about letting
         | go of fears and expectations. Letting go of the meaning we
         | assign to the past and future. About really choosing the
         | perspective that we wish to view the present through, rather
         | than being at the effect of the stories we make up about the
         | past and future.
        
           | thenerdhead wrote:
           | I don't disagree with anything you said. I'd just summarize
           | it as "mindfulness". Which is present-focused attention in my
           | eyes.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | dbtc wrote:
           | You're describing the what, but if you ask a (meditating)
           | buddhist how to this, they'll tell you to observe your breath
           | (or some other concentration technique), which is an exercise
           | to train your ability to manage your attention. Being (in
           | the) present is a skill.
        
           | spoiler wrote:
           | You are correct, but the parent is also correct. Meditation
           | was a tool utilises by Buddhists (amongst others) to develop
           | stable attention and focus (sans the spirituality of higher
           | "levels" in meditation).
           | 
           | The book "The Mind Illuminated" goes into great detail about
           | this
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | ludwigindahouse wrote:
        
       | Finnucane wrote:
       | I remember hearing people say things like "it's not about
       | profits, it's about eyeballs," and thinking, you can't pay the
       | rent with eyeballs.
        
         | paulpauper wrote:
         | Facebook and Instagram showed that eyeballs can be very
         | lucrative . The old web 1.0 sites simply didn't have good ways
         | to monetize it , unlike today. Mobile advertising didn't exist,
         | neither did tracking and big data.
        
           | rmah wrote:
           | This may sound like a tautology, but those eyeballs were only
           | "lucrative" because they could be converted to money. As the
           | person you were responding to implied.
        
             | danenania wrote:
             | I think that was always the plan. Eyeballs in the short
             | term, profits in the long term.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | I bet even the founders of Google didn't even know at first how
         | much eyeballs are worth.
        
         | sophacles wrote:
         | This is why a good physics education is important... Under
         | certain conditions the standard model includes several
         | spontaneous transformations from eyeballs -> cash. The trick is
         | getting a critical mass of eyeballs for the conversions to be
         | frequent enough to pay the bills.
        
           | wishfish wrote:
           | I hope an RPG designer read your joke. I'd love to see a
           | "transmute eyeballs to gold" alchemical recipe show up. Would
           | be hilarious. Especially in an MMORPG where it's crucial to
           | their bottom line to keep players' attention for as long as
           | possible.
        
           | mistermann wrote:
           | I think you mean metaphysics?
        
             | toxicFork wrote:
             | When you have enough eyeballs they will collapse into a
             | plasma state from their own mass and then you can harvest
             | that into work or electricity then sell that for money
        
               | klyrs wrote:
               | obligatory https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/
        
               | mistermann wrote:
               | How to invoke unseriousness in humans: mention
               | metaphysics.
        
           | xdavidliu wrote:
           | > the standard model
           | 
           | I do not think it means what you think it means.
        
             | sophacles wrote:
             | I'm talking about literal eyeballs transmuting to cash as
             | if it's the result of particle physics. I don't think you
             | should read anything more than "its a joke" into my
             | comment.
        
         | MonkeyMalarky wrote:
         | I remember people talking about internal rivalries at IBM and
         | Microsoft over user's eyeballs. Every app wants to be the main
         | productivity app., king of the eyeballs!
        
       | imtringued wrote:
       | Those who are wrong about money will be wrong about everything
       | else.
        
       | openfuture wrote:
       | Doubt. Attention is definitely important but as I keep saying;
       | the value of your contribution is not based in opportunity cost
       | but rather the dependency structure. If many people are providing
       | you with attention then that is making you an important
       | dependency in some sense but someone who maintains critical
       | infrastructure is also worth alot, even if no one pays attention.
        
       | booleandilemma wrote:
       | Whenever I see sentiments like this, or when I hear people with
       | comfortable jobs in the tech industry talk about how money is
       | imaginary, etc., it just comes across as being detached from
       | reality to me.
       | 
       | It's easy to fall into this trap when money is abstracted away to
       | being just a number you see on your smartphone, but money is very
       | real, and if you don't have it, you can't pay rent or for heat in
       | winter.
        
         | swayvil wrote:
         | Money is basically software. Meaningless without a machine to
         | run it.
        
         | salty_biscuits wrote:
         | I think the nuance is that money is made up, not that it is
         | imaginary. It is an abstraction that lets you live in a society
         | that will let people be cold and hungry without feeling too bad
         | about it.
        
         | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
         | Money is politics by other means. It's real to the extent that
         | a certain kind of politics is real.
         | 
         | If you don't have enough to pay your bills it's not because
         | there isn't enough energy for you to heat your home. It's
         | because making sure you can heat your home /pay rent/eat isn't
         | a priority for the people with the political power to make
         | those decisions.
        
         | doubled112 wrote:
         | Coming at this another way, money is only valuable because
         | society and the world says it has value.
         | 
         | Money doesn't do anything on its own. If I'm cold in the middle
         | of nowhere, a pack of matches and block of wood have value to
         | me at that moment, but my Canada plastic money doesn't even
         | make good kindling.
         | 
         | If the world seriously falls apart, what are your dollars
         | worth?
        
           | duncan-donuts wrote:
           | This is nonsense. Money is very real because it's an
           | abstraction for materials, goods, services, etc. If
           | governments fail and currencies collapse yeah sure that money
           | can't do anything for you, but idk about you but my USD is
           | good just about anywhere and it does a lot for me.
           | 
           | You might make arguments that when the world falls apart
           | you'll be glad you outsmarted us by buying gold or some other
           | thing society decided has value. But if the world falls apart
           | I wouldn't bet on gold being the best thing to trade with.
           | I'd rather have a stockpile of medicine, ammunition,
           | livestock, and a seed bank. Those things are hard to store
           | until you need them for an apocalypse. I can assure you that
           | if you tried to give me gold for ammunition in this scenario
           | you'd be leaving with gold.
           | 
           | You could also argue that gold/silver would and is a good
           | currency abstraction and I'd agree with you. In the absurd
           | scenario that the world falls apart I wouldn't count on
           | merchants coming around that actually want gold/silver. So
           | many useful things become useless in an end of the world
           | scenario that it's not worth worrying about.
        
             | xwdv wrote:
             | If the world falls apart your net worth will be composed
             | only of things you can actually protect and defend, because
             | everything else will just be taken away from you. The rule
             | of law isn't around to save you.
             | 
             | But that's why if the world falls apart, the most valuable
             | resource will be attention. If you have a lot of true
             | followers, and they believe you know what you're doing and
             | that life could be better if they follow you rather than go
             | it alone, then you will have many people to protect you and
             | bring you resources, and in this way you can build your
             | dominion in the post apocalyptic world.
             | 
             | If you're a true prepper, you should be hoarding influence
             | and attention. This will give you the best life possible at
             | the end of the world.
        
             | coldtea wrote:
             | > _This is nonsense. Money is very real because it's an
             | abstraction for materials, goods, services, etc._
             | 
             | Abstractions are by definition not real.
             | 
             | What's real about the money is the political and legal
             | power (enforced by actual people) that allows you to
             | exchange it with goods.
        
       | mysterydip wrote:
       | Right as I was reading this title on the front page, I got an
       | amazon prime video push notification popup (that I don't recall
       | permitting before) to tell me about an upcoming sports event I
       | could watch live.
        
       | siavosh wrote:
       | If anyone has a Buddhist bent, attention is somewhat synonymous
       | (I think) with consciousness. So there are some profound
       | implications.
        
         | ElfinTrousers wrote:
         | It was Wired magazine in 1997. I think it's safe to assume that
         | most or all of them had a Buddhist bent, or at least affected
         | one.
        
       | remir wrote:
       | Ultimately, it is more about influence than attention itself.
       | 
       | You can see how some thoughts and new expressions spread like
       | viruses nowadays. The term "Quiet quitting" being one recent
       | example as it seems like every LinkedIn influencer and OpEd are
       | talking about this thing as it's widespread and the "new
       | reality".
        
         | klabb3 wrote:
         | Influence is just the potential energy of attention.
        
         | threads2 wrote:
         | is the internet bad for me? should I just quit it? kind of
         | sounds like "intrusive thought"
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | > You can see how some thoughts and new expressions spread like
         | viruses nowadays. The term "Quiet quitting" being one recent
         | example as it seems like every LinkedIn influencer and OpEd are
         | talking about this thing as it's widespread and the "new
         | reality".
         | 
         | Ah, the OG definition of meme
        
           | ElevenLathe wrote:
           | One way you could characterize our current information
           | environment is as an Eden for memes like this. There are few
           | predators, and the necessities of life are abundant.
        
       | wslh wrote:
       | It depends... if you are poor or not. Just to give a gross
       | grouping.
        
         | jonny_eh wrote:
         | The right kind of attention can lift people out of
         | homelessness, e.g.
         | https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/04/23/ted-golden-vo...
         | 
         | One could argue homelessness remains a growing problem because
         | it does not receive sufficient attention.
        
           | wslh wrote:
           | Seems like you can replace attention with zillions of
           | placeholders like: the same right kind of intelligence can
           | lift people out of homelessness.
        
           | cwmoore wrote:
           | Isn't that datapoint an exception that proves the rule? I
           | note that a homeless person receiving acclaim and the issue
           | of homelessness receiving attention are orders apart.
        
       | scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
       | If that is the case, HN definitely takes a relatively big chunk
       | in my case.
        
       | kloch wrote:
       | > Almost everyone will have a personal Web site.
       | 
       | At first it seems like the author got this prediction horribly
       | wrong, except almost everyone does have one or more social media
       | accounts which is the modern equivalent.
        
         | JohnJamesRambo wrote:
         | I'm imagining a future where we got the former and it is such a
         | cooler (and more harmonious) future.
        
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