Attention please!! your attention is on sale

The pictures of Kim Kardashian sums up almost everything we dislike about social media. Her pictures are what we hate looking at but at the same time can’t look away also. Her pictures are shared number of times creating a series of cultural car wreck which is discussed for some time till we change our focus to the next oncoming cultural car wreck. But this is not limited to extreme cases like her pictures only but even for innocuous day to day experiences. Our attention is up for grabs.

The complaint about social media and internet is generally 3 types. First, it is making us self centered and shallow. Second, it is making us less close to the meaningful ones and thus lonelier and third, it is acting a as an interference in our ability to focus.  But it is not completely true. It is giving a narcissist more opportunity to spread narcissism to a larger audience. It is increasing our casual contacts and therefore we are neglecting the important ones. Though our distractions increase but we are also exposed to newer avenues to focus on.

Technology is not changing us but it is just amplifying what we are and what we want.

The changing focus of economy

Before the industrial revolution the focus was mainly on land. The productive land was limited and so was the amount of food available. The focus was more on getting more land under control and even countries fought for it. Food was the priority and all the common man’s efforts was on what to produce, how will the rainfall be, how is the harvesting, whether there will be a famine or not.

When the industrial revolution came then we increased the production of the available productive land. With extensive colonization by the rich countries now the focus shifted to labor. Now more people were required to run the machines which will make some very rich. Labor was required to convert raw material to finished product.  These rich countries started the concept of migration of labor and thousands where taking from their ancestral homeland to new countries.

In the twentieth century, with more production and automation and more money available with the people the focus shifted to information. People wanted to spend money on purchases but they did not have the information as to what to choose from the wide range of choices. The advertisement and marketing fields boomed giving the people information about the best tooth paste and toasters and best holidaying places. The radio, TV and the internet became the breeding ground of information and people were bombarded with information on ways to spend money.

Now information was abundantly available on anything under the sun. If you want to buy a new product you will get hundreds of pages on internet and hundreds of reviews on Amazon. If you want to know about stars you will have hundreds of pages available. With such surplus of information, what was deficient was the attention of people. Now the focus is capturing the attention of the people.

It is an attention based economy now. Now we are getting to see hundreds of advertisement in our social media accounts, in TV, in SMS on our smart phones. The goal is to not decimate information but to get the attention. And in this process the advertisements are getting more weird and nonsensical.

Even politics have now become more of dramatics than that of framing of proper policies. Politics which was basically limited to rallies on road side has now reached our bedroom. This is the age of attention that’s why the Kim Kardashians are so famous, they have the attention. The stupid people are becoming rich and famous because they are getting our attention.

(Here in read.cash also its all about getting the attention. Previously it was for the power user and now for the random rewarder. Attention= money)

to be continued.......