Attention-economy is a conceptual framework that models human attention as a scarce, competitively allocated resource, treatable and tradable the way economic goods are. It maps media platforms, algorithms, advertising, and information systems onto a market architecture in which the scarce input is focused cognitive capacity and the currency is time-on-screen, engagement metrics, and data extraction. The framework persists through academic discourse (media studies, political economy of communication), industry practice (ad-tech optimization, algorithmic recommendation, UX growth metrics), and policy debate (screen-time regulation, digital wellness, antitrust). It was coined by Herbert Simon in 1971 and operationalized by Clay Shirky and later by digital-media critics. It carves the space between the natural faculty of attention (out of scope, Law 2a) and the constructed market-model that treats that faculty as extractable yield — the parameters being: a scarcity claim about attention, a mapping of design practices to attention capture, and a metric regime that quantifies engagement as revenue. [formal: attentionis oeconomia | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.74]
Accepted ontology entry
attention-economy
Attention-economy is a conceptual framework that models human attention as a scarce, competitively allocated resource, treatable and tradable the way economic goods are. It maps media platforms, algorithms, advertising, and information sys…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made conceptual framework treating attention as a scarce resource competitively allocated by media, platforms, and information systems designed to capture and retain it. Persists through academic discourse, policy debates, and design practice.
Names and aliases
- attention-economyen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrr9z9vq011vq89dp8aiyqhyINSTANCE_OF →
Attention-economy is a specific kind of conceptual framework: it maps human attention onto economic metaphors (scarcity, competition, allocation) to analyze media and marketing systems. A competent speaker would call it a conceptual framework — the economic language is its content, not its kind.
- cmrgrc7ac0027yvn1hxa549vhDEPENDS_ON →
The attention-economy framework is constitutively about attention — it analyzes attention as a scarce economic resource. Removal test: remove the concept of attention and attention-economy ceases to operate; there is no framework about attention without attention as its subject matter. This is a constitutive dependency, not a meta-level one under Law 2b.
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 24, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 15fedc102c298e51bfdffd112b0834d5e0c339020eed212f6e1d3ca57e640a0a