The attention economy.
John Hagel III has written a fascinating series of articles on what is being called the "Attention Economy". His comments are located here, here and here. I highly recommend my readers to view these articles thoroughly. Hagel picks up from the quotation of Professor Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureates quote,
"...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 and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of the information sources that might consume it."I think that Hagel is picking up where Simon's comment left off and introduces some current research that Michael Goldhaber is doing in this area. Goldhaber's best articles are here, here and here. Attention is not a commodity, in that it is fixed and Hagel discusses both the scope of your own attention and the attention that ideas can garner and sustain. I wanted to comment on the important impact of this thinking and relate the significance of what I think is being said.
For myself I find the demand to keep enhancing my information systems requires daily diligence of what, where and who I spend my attention on. If I am not vigilant I become satisfied with the status quo and that is a dangerous attitude to have these days. There is enough justification and supporting information to ignore and belittle the overall and global changes that are occurring today. Many prefer to refer to their BlackBerry's and consume their lives in the day to day grind of mindless activity. We need to focus our attention on what and where we are going with these technologies. If we loose sight of the road that we are travelling on we could be lost for a sizable amount of time.
An important point of view to maintain is the technology works for me to meet my needs, I do not respond in any way to the demands of the technology. Needless to say I have no BlackBerry and I ensure that at least 80% of my synchronous time is spent in person, with limited amount of time being spent on phone calls. I communicate asynchronously, or at my time, on my schedule and my agenda. Many things fall off the table as a result, and I am best able to prioritize what is necessary.
The other aspect that is important is the speed at which things are viewed. I like to spend as much time as I can per day on reviewing and writing what I am researching about. With three blogs and two major topics it is something that requires a focus that is difficult to sustain. So there are two modes, quick and summary where little is available for immediate recall, yet some of the more important aspects are recalled many days later, or as required. Here is where Google is an invaluable tool in that I am then able to re-find that reference almost immediately. And then there is the reading and reviewing at the pace that is necessary to take notes and assimilate the complex topics that demand my time and efforts. These can take a goodly amount of time, but that time is afforded to me as I know nothing otherwise will be lost.
I frequently look at it from the point of view that Google has provided me with at least 7,000 of the smartest people in the world, working to make my information better. Google also provides me with the supercomputing power necessary to index and make available that information that is the most important to me. Such power in the hands of every user will make the majority of the major issues in the world more solvable. The most surprising element of this tool is that Google is making a billion dollars a quarter doing this. The attention economy operates on a different premise.
So what is it that I am trying to do here. In a nutshell I am trying to create and sustain the necessary attention of my readers to ensure that their time is most effectively spent on reading, sharing and conversing through this blog. There ability to be fully informed through a high quality filter is what I am preparing and providing to them in this blog format. The recent changes that I have made to this blog are designed to increase the value and usability. And include;
- Use of Labels, as well as Technorati tags, providing my readers with a variety of ways to aggregate items that I and others write about.
- I installed three custom search engines;
- Oil and gas custom search reviews the highest quality journals and sites that cover the global oil and gas business. As I find more high quality documents and sites I will add them to that search engine.
- Innovation search engine reviews the quality documents and sites that I discover and use in my research regarding innovation.
- Academic search engine that provides the best academic sites available. Oxford, Harvard, MIT, London School of Economics, University of Chicago, Berkely, Princeton, Yale and Stanford to name just a few. Other sites like DSpace and most of the universities that provide their course offerings and videos online.
- I have installed not only the del.ico.us articles that I read and find of value, but now have included the tag cloud that these articles and tagging provides. Readers are encouraged to fully explore the referenced articles and tags, they are there for your reading enjoyment and to act as a filter to get to the quality stuff first. Please don't hesitate to join my del.ico.us network while visiting.
- I have also provided 50 of the most recent blog posts and readings that I discover through my RSS reader, Google Reader. These url's can be seen by going to the website where these ideas are hosted. These provide my readers with the best of the best.
- And finally a financial summary that caters to the oil and gas market activity. And a summary of the Sun Microsystem Aquarium which is where the J2EE server that we will be using is summarized.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. As I have mentioned here before, there is no better job in the world from my point of view. I will be writing more on the topic of the attention economy and work hard to focus my readers attention as finely as I can.
Technorati Tags: Attention-Economy, Hagel, Research, Strategy
