Transactions in the Attention vs the Industrial Economies

The flow of capital in the industrial capitalism is structured around the basic buy/sell transactions. In the attention economy, the basic transaction is ‘pay/receive attention’. In the digital world the buy/sell transaction means the physical or digital exchange of currency followed by a delivery of good or service. The currencies we use for exchange are centrally issued by the national central banks and distributed via debt.

In the digital attention economy, the ‘pay/receive attention’ transaction can be represented by a variety of attention currencies. Currencies such as likes, links, retweets, favorites are used to exchange attention online. These are ‘issued’ by the ‘centrals banks of attention’ - the online internet platforms such as Google, Facebook and others.

So the flow of industrial capital is structured by the buy/sell transactions and registered in the banking system. The flow of attention capital online is structured by millions of the attention transactions that take place on the online platforms.

Our brains connected with smartphones and social media platforms create the global, digital “attention exchange network”.

Each individual can be viewed as a node on this network that can pay (send) & receive attention using the ‘attention currencies’ of a given platform.

However, attention is a networked resource. Even though each one of us has the same amount of attention capital to begin with, some of us attract way more attention than others.

Speaking on a stage or publishing a video online I can have thousands of people pay attention to me. This aggregated attention can be then diverted elsewhere - I can point at a product during the video and redirect attention to that product.

Because attention is valuable people who control these attention flows (i.e online celebrities) can receive money by redirecting attention to whoever is willing to pay.