{"id":138,"date":"2007-04-27T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2007-04-27T23:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/wp\/?p=138"},"modified":"2007-04-27T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2007-04-27T23:37:08","slug":"herbert-simon-the-attention-economy-and-whuffie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/27\/herbert-simon-the-attention-economy-and-whuffie\/","title":{"rendered":"Herbert Simon, the Attention Economy and Whuffie"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230;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&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; (Simon, H. A. (1971), &#8220;Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World&#8221;, in Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, p. 40-41).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The role of reputation in a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Post-scarcity\">post scarcity<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Attention_economy\">attention economy<\/a> is quite interesting to me.  In the post-scarcity scenario, all basic human material needs and most wants are readily met.  In the highly hypothetical post scarcity scenario, the human need for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Positional_good\">positional goods<\/a> would still need to be fulfilled, and attention would continue to be scarce in the presence of ever increasing information, barring some radical modification of human psychology.<\/p>\n<p>This all reminds me of Doctorow&#8217;s <em>Down in Out in the Magic Kingdom<\/em> (<a href=\"http:\/\/craphound.com\/down\/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom.pdf\">free pdf download<\/a>) and his <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Whuffie\">Whuffie<\/a> concept:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This abundance has brought about the end of labor and money, and the only thing that makes one person worth more than anyone else is &#8220;Whuffie&#8221;, a constantly updated rating that measures how much esteem and respect other people have for you. This rating system determines who gets the few scarce items, like the best housing, a table in a crowded restaurant, or a good place in a queue for a theme park attraction. (from Wikpedia&#8217;s entry on Down in Out in the Magic Kingdom)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;&#8230;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","czr-hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71YpQ-2e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}