Attention is the new currency
Data is the new Oil! A trendy declaration from more than a decade ago, an eon in technological progress time. Many news articles and tech founders highlighted the shift in business priorities and proclaimed the slogan loudly. They were certainly correct in principle. Data accelerated the development of machine learning models which led to arguably the greatest innovation since the internet – intelligent AI systems. Data is an immensely valuable resource that powers modern industries but it is not particularly useful until refined and processed correctly. In recent years, data has become ubiquitous and the tide is shifting towards a different finite and valuable resource – trust.
Since the introduction of low cost generative AI models at scale, the internet has been flooded with heaps of AI generated content. At times useful, at times hallucinated and misleading. We can still spot when something is not quite human-made, although the line is getting blurrier with every model iteration. Soon, AI content will become practically indistinguishable from reality and even experts in the field will have a hard time processing the differences. That will be a breaking point, a fundamental change in the way consumers use the internet. Whether the result will be a net positive is yet to be seen.
When AI democratizes the content creation process and allows for everyone to capture our attention at an incredibly low cost, then no one truly owns it. Perfectly generated content makes the noise too loud, understanding too complex. The cognitive cost to filter for the genuine will rise sharply. This will transform how the algorithm works and increase the preference for trust-based content. In the same way, for quite some time now, most emails from strangers and unknown corporations are ignored. They are too cheap to produce and are often misleading or even outright scams.
Trust, reputation, branding, friendship. These are filters – guides to where people should spend their precious and finite attention and money. It is likely that high-trust, low-scale spaces will be of major importance in the near future. This situation leaves the consistent content creator in a great position, particularly when they haven’t lost the trust from their followers. But the real hope here is that the original purpose of social media will return – the connection between friends and acquaintances. The sharing of real moments between humans who truly understand and trust each other. The knowledge that what you are getting is genuine. An optimistic possibility, but a real one nonetheless. There are few people we trust as much as our real friends – not celebrities, not businesses and certainly not the current reality of parasocial relationships.
It is easy to see that most of us are living in an attention-based economy. This is particularly true for people spending most of their time in front of their digital devices. Technology and automation have enabled more wealth, free time and enjoyment for us. When all our basic needs are met, attention becomes valuable – a new currency of sorts – a finite monetisable commodity. It is a currency because we trade it in exchange for something. It is largely irrelevant whether we receive entertainment, information or goods in return. The more attention is captured by a company, the more financial benefits it can extract through a number of methods – the most common being advertisement.
Nowadays, a lot of what we do in our spare time is passive – it is just easier to complacently consume. Watching movies, TV series and videos, listening to music, and worst of all – mindlessly scrolling social media. The overwhelming amount of cheap content and the foreseeable evolution of the algorithm due to trust issues means that we will be moving towards a more action-oriented economy. We no longer only care whether something is interesting, we also care whether it is worth our attention. We need to actively choose which content to consume and which goods to purchase. A trusted entity can help us make these decisions much more easily. A recommendation from a friend or an offer from a known brand will carry considerable worth in the sea of distraction. Passivity is gone, attention is the currency and it is up to us how to spend it.
In a way, this new reality feels like a step back. Corporations with large budgets would be able to purchase visibility like the good old days of cable TV monopoly. However, exposure doesn’t necessarily equate with trust. Trust is earned hard and lost easily. The fragile situation means businesses will be held accountable and presumably the quality of content, goods and services will go up.
The fundamental changes in the way trust and attention will interact in the era of AI are very real but the differences will not arrive as a snap, colossal event but rather as a gradual change. The slower we adapt as consumers, the more likely we will suffer in this transitional period. The currency is burned on unworthy, cheap content which we did not choose. The only way to control and preserve our attention, is with unwavering focus on what we decide is important to us. The management consultant Peter Drucker said something that resonates with our current situation more than ever:
Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.
Concentration is often associated with work, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. The logic transfers cleanly to our everyday lives. Active choices and deliberate concentration are keys to a better life beyond economic gains. If we cannot maintain a sustained, conscious effort on what we care about, we are destined to live our lives on autopilot. If attention is a new currency, then concentration is the act of spending it deliberately.
Trust is the new oil and in an increasingly automated world, active attention is the new currency. Concentration is the antidote to the attention crisis and the ones who wield that power well will be the winners in the era of abundance. The people who curate their trust and protect their ability to focus will thrive in a world where most people are doing neither.
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