We live in a cultural moment (regime?) known as the attention economy: a market dynamic where human attention, once a personal, economically-valueless resource, is now a powerful economic commodity.
It’s a finite asset, though - there’s only so much time in a day. So our attention is competed for, fiercely, brazenly and carelessly.
Brands want people’s attention. And tech platforms, media owners, publishers, anyone with a surface that an ad, #ad or sponsored message could appear on, sells access to people’s attention.
By now, we’re all well aware that - like professor and Silicon Valley veteran Tim Wu said in his 2016 book, Attention Merchants - if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
But how did we get here…how did the attention economy emerge?
It’s about scarcity
Author Mark Manson explains how we got here, in this wonderfully expletive-laden, several years-old blog post. Nutshell: what’s most scarce tends to be what’s most valued (supply/demand).
“For most of human history, the big economic scarcity in the world was land. There was a limited amount of productive land, so there was a limited amount of food.
[By the time of] the industrial revolution…machines could now cultivate more than enough food for everybody.
Now the big scarcity became labour/skills. You needed trained people to run all these machines that did all of the cool new shit, so you could make money and get rich.By the 20th century, there was more stuff being produced than anyone would ever need or could ever purchase. The new scarcity in society was no longer labor or land, the scarcity was now knowledge.
People…didn’t know what to purchase…trying to figure out what the best toothpaste was, what a toaster oven could do, [where to go on] holidays and so on. Marketing…[emerged as] a means of disseminating the information people needed.
…Now, there is more information than any of us knows what to do with…an abundance of knowledge. The new scarcity in the internet age is attention.”
So to understand what might come after the attention economy, we need to understand what the next scarcity might be.
New scarcity rising?
In a moment when the tech innovation curve is flattening out (some feel that generative A.I may be our final great human discovery/invention - from Silicone Valley to this Vanity Fair piece: We’re creating God), and where creativity is in crisis, and - by the look of the likely U.S. presidential candidates, and the state of British high politics right now, and it does kinda seem like we’ve run out of ideas.
It feels like a new scarity is up on us: imagination.
Our innate, unique human ability to think deeply + critically + creatively. To imagine solutions to problems, and new ways of doing things.
It’s currently pretty well held that AI can supersede the typical human’s level of creativity, but it can’t (yet, likely ever) beat out the most creative human brain. So we still need that top-slice of human imagination.
“The most creative human beings (the rare top 2%) consistently outperform A.I. in creative challenges.” - Doug Stephens picking the bones out of a recent Uni of Arkansas study.
Kids are being steered away from coding and towards the liberal arts by the bosses at IBM, nobel prize winners, and by Conor Grennan, Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern School.
He thinks the future looks bright for English majors, psychology majors, sociologists, those in the liberal arts or any related field. Because generative AI doesn’t behave like other software. It behaves more like a human - conversational, deductive, iterative.
He suggests that these people are the ones who’ll be in demand to create the future of AI models (not by building/coding them, but by training and improving them).
The…Imagination Economy
If we connect what Matt says with what Conor says, then it appears that there’s a new scarcity being exposed. And as scarcities have historically so often driven + defined the economic moment, are we entering the Imagination Economy?
In an AI-enabled world, will the human ability to join dots across subject matter in new ways be highly prized? Critical thinking, deductive thinking, empathy, communications skills - expressing yourself clearly, curiosity, conceptual thinking, open-mindedness and the willingness to be challenged and iterate?
Everyone is rushing to develop AI prompting skills, and leadership teams are pushing to embed these skills in their businesses (my LinkedIn feed’s full of such gurus hawking courses, and conferences keynoted by folks discussing this). But it’s not just about asking questions well. It’s about asking better questions. In the right way, in the right order, with the right frame of reference.
Imagination might not be the best word to summarise of all that, but it’s the best I can think of so far.
What do you think?
Regardless the exact word, I think *this* could well be the next scarcity, the next prized commodity, the next fuel for the next-wave xxx-economy.
I know, imagination isn’t obviously monetisable.
But neither was attention, until it was.
But it might just be the greatest human resource we have in an era fraught with so many complicated problems.
Like Toni Morrison said: “Dream a little before you think.”
Thanks for reading/see you next time. Pattern Recognition deliberately has no paywall - all I ask is that you share with someone who’ll care. As somebody clever once said: imagination craves community.
Beth :)
Want to go a bit deeper?
Read this: This crowd-created, imagination-based political/societal manifesto that just dropped from Rob Hopkins is well worth a read. Pick your fave policy. Me? ‘Ensure our clothes are made in dignity'. Also...teach kids to grow food!.
(Wish we'd had this when I worked in Whitehall).
Or this: Ruha Benjamin’s new book ‘Imagination: A Manifesto’.
Urgh the AI linkedin posts. My dashboard is split between the 'AI is great! look at the innovation! look at how it can improve peoples lives!' and the 'AI needs data, good data, good brains, join us to make it better'. My philosophy degrees are looking at me with hopeful eyes after reading this article.
Interestingly, the 'attention economy' cycle would have brought us back to the opposite, meaning 'neglect' or 'ignorance', to counterbalance.
Here we observe the further deepening of own's attention towards a couple of chosen subjects, adding layers of analysis to their consideration, recognition, and conceptualization, which may be performed more or less awkwardly. For example, the rising trend of booktok-ification and the thoughtful development of longer-form and imaginative content.