The Attention Economy

Yet, ours is not truly an information economy. By definition, economics is the study of how a society uses its scarce resources. And information is not scarce – especially on the Net, where it is not only abundant, but overflowing. We are drowning in information, yet constantly increasing our generation of it.

 

So a key question arises: Is there something else that flows through cyberspace, something that is scarce and desirable? There is. No one would put anything on the Internet without the hope of obtaining some. It’s called attention. And the economy of attention – not information – is the natural economy of cyberspace.

 

The quote above, and the Wired Magazine article below express the thinking of Michael H. Goldhaber, in 1997.

One of the struggles of developing effective online teaching tools involves the seemingly obvious, but often overlooked, question of: “are people (students) paying attention, or not?” Sometimes this battle for eyeballs, ears, minds and hearts, seems to fall off the radar of the “Education Establishment”, but being blind to something doesn’t make it go away.

Clearly, a first-rate educational tool is useless without participants. One of the biggest changes in education, made so much more evident by the pandemic, is that of vying for attention online, with all the other attention-grabbing ways for students to spend their time.

Formerly students were disciplined in classrooms to pay attention to what the teacher wants them to pay attention to. With mixed results for learning, attention was demanded, and choice wasn’t allowed. This doesn’t work online, and seemingly will work less in the classroom as online tools become ubiquitous there too.

When the problem of attention choice is faced up to, the challenge is to identify those parts and types of online experience that do grab attention and don’t let go. This would include knowing how video games, movies, YouTubes, TikToks etc,, garner involvement. Then edtech and OTL needs to incorporate elements of media into online learning that can “compete for eyeballs” with other extant choices.

Not that this is necessarily easy to accomplish in today’s “attention economy”, because the competition is tough, and learning isn’t “pure entertainment”, it involves participation, and focus, and an intention of “being there” for learning goals, at least to some degree. How would the balance of educational “carrots and sticks” look when there are fully enabled OTL tools available as a choice?

Below is an updater in the NY Times about Goldhaber’s ideas today.