what with global warming and the global financial meltdown, it seems hardly a day goes by without a heart-wrenching natural disaster, or greed-fuelled economic one, dominating the day’s headlines. Possibly even more worrying than the events themselves, is that anyone should be surprised at their occurrence. Seemingly the environmentalists and financial analysts are only to be believed once the events of which they warn become blindingly manifest. And having made an apparent mess of the real world in which we live, is it any wonder that so many people are retreating into their ‘second life’, escaping into virtual worlds of their own creation? Which is why the next economic crunch, particularly for the media and entertainment industries, centres around the attention economy. As long ago as 1971, Nobel Prize winning political scientist Herbert Simon said, “…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 information sources that might consume it.” And in 2005, Umair Haque wrote, “Across consumer markets, attention is becoming the scarcest – and so most strategically vital – resource in the value chain. Attention scarcity is fundamentally shaping the economics of most industries it touches: beginning with the media industry.” It would appear the media industry has been given ample warning about its impending attention economic crisis. Let’s hope it acts upon those predictions rather than, like warnings about the environment and the economy, remaining in denial until it’s too late.
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