Ever heard the term attention economics? It’s an interesting idea. Basically, attention economics is a relatively recent field of study that regards human attention as a scarce commodity.
In 1971, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon first wrote about the concept:
“…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” (Simon 1971, pp. 40–41).
If Simon thought there was an “overabundance of information sources” over forty years ago—before the internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr; before online movies, games, and music; and before round-the-clock cable TV programming—what would he think today? According to Blogging.org’s statistics, there are about 31 million bloggers in the US alone, writing on every conceivable subject.
We can now see, hear, or read pretty much whatever we want, as soon as we want it. If it gets boring, even for a second, we can move on to something else.
It used to be that there were advertisements on TV, newspapers, and magazines. Now they’re on every internet page we browse. Even the old standby, highway billboards, are now giant TV screens with full-colour video.
All of these media are competing for our attention every minute of every day, in addition to the normal demands of work, family, and education. So it’s easy to see what Simon was getting at. Attention certainly is a scarce commodity, and these days it’s at a premium.
The high-tech industry knows this and is taking action.
App designers are now designing software applications that are influenced by attention economic theory. They know if there are too many distractions in the user interface that get in the way of the app’s functioning, users will abandon the app and find another. Everything the user sees needs to be relevant, interesting, and succinct.
Microsoft, too, has recognized the need to help people organize the barrage of information they face each day, and is rumored to be working on an artificial intelligence product called Personal Agent, which according to Bill Gates will “remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, Simon was also an early contributor in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Among other things, AI is a way of freeing up scarce human attention. As we mentioned in our last blog, a human security guard can only monitor a CCTV display accurately for about 20 minutes, and accuracy declines faster the more displays there are to monitor.
Consider that some experts peg the number of video surveillance cameras worldwide at around 245 million, most of which are analog. Can you imagine the human costs of monitoring all the video they generate? The worst of it is knowing that even after all that expense, it’s not terribly effective. No wonder video security companies are turning increasingly to AI.
At present, artificial intelligence video monitoring software has evolved to the point where it can make very sophisticated judgements about what is important or suspicious activity, and when to sound the alarm. It can monitor an unlimited numbers of cameras without ceasing.
And, it will let you know in real time when there’s anything to worry about, so you can spend your scarce attention in more engaging ways.
