The Attention Economy

What I have learned from The World After Capital by Albert Wenger

@CharlieLongren

TLDR: The world is in the middle of a transition between the Industrial Age and the Knowledge Age. In the Knowledge Age our most scarce and valuable resource is attention.

In physics, students are taught to find out what works in a vacuum then add variables in order to see what changes. This approach has become known as “first principles” thinking. Thinking from first principles can be applied in every field of study, and I believe it is the best approach to think about any problem because it provides a solid foundation for the conclusions that are reached. The reason that I like The World After Capital is because I believe that Albert Wenger applies first principles thinking to his theories about the economic future of the world.

Albert’s main conclusion is that the world is moving from the Industrial Age toward what he coined as the Knowledge Age because we are moving away from scarcity of capital and toward scarcity of attention. He explains that through history humanity has transitioned through many economic eras all defined by which good was scarce at the time.

In the Forager Age, the scarce good was food. We were nomadic because our survival depended on how well we adapted to the flow of the seasons and the migration of animals. If the buffalos moved and we did not follow, we would likely die. Once humanity began to farm and learned to domesticate animals, food was no longer scarce. Instead the scarcity was land, and we entered into the Agrarian Age. As humanity innovated and improved the effective utilization of labor and land, physical capital became the scarce good. In order for humanity to continue to survive we needed to create assets (physical capital) to produce vital goods and services. The age of scarce physical capital is the Industrial Age. That same physical capital helped us make progress toward a new age: the Knowledge Age. Albert explains that the scarce “good” in the Knowledge Age is attention.

The scarcity of attention is not a new revelation. Companies like Facebook and Tik Tok spend billions of dollars in order to find ways to better capture our attention. Youtubers, streamers, and celebrities also have recognized that your attention is far more valuable than your money. Popular youtubers like Mr. Beast and Stevewilldoit give away millions of dollars in order to create compelling content that increases the amount of attention that their channels receive. Since before the first entertainment based radio programs people have understood that time is money. So why is attention so important now?

“Attention is to time as velocity is to speed.... Velocity is speed (with) direction. Attention is time (with) intentionality.” What has become scarce is people’s availability to spend deliberate and purposeful time in order to create the inputs that will help humanity survive into the future. There is a limited amount of time that each individual has in their day and in their lives. Between our work and our social lives, there is an even greater limit on the amount of time that we have to spend on problems we may encounter in the future. To make matters worse, digital technology is a double edged sword that has made it incredibly difficult to be intentional in our use of time (i.e. Twitter, Amazon, Tik Tok ect).

Bill Gates and many others gave warnings about the threats of a global pandemic well before the year 2020, yet the issue did not have enough attention until it was (arguably) too late. Many other billionaires have become fascinated and obsessed with navigating the solar system. They have what seems like an unlimited amount of money and capital to deploy toward that goal. But, without deploying the attention of brilliant rocket scientists, chemists, biologists and entrepreneurs, those billionaires are unlikely to see their dreams come to fruition. More so, if the aerospace companies owned by those billionaires do not effectively garner attention from the right individuals and organizations, it is unlikely that they will be able to attract the talent required to achieve their objectives.

Because finding solutions to threats and creating innovations are both vital to humanity’s survival, we will need to better manage our attention. Now, attention is our most scarce resource. If saving the world is not a good enough incentive to be mindful about the way we allocate attention, managing it will likely result in personal gain as well. To win the future, individuals and organizations must understand and effectively manage attention and use it to create societal value.