Two words and some meta-information in a note blow a recent post by Franklin Einspruch caught my attention.
The words were “attention economy” and the link led to an article called “Attention Shoppers!” by Michael H. Goldhaber. Goldhaber, according to a footnote on the article is “completing a book on the attention economy.” Read the article if you want to know more about this topic.
The idea is that we are not in an information economy. (Information abounds to the extent that it would be equally valid to say that we are in an oxygen economy.) Instead, we exchange attention with one another.
The discussion question is this—are we indeed in an information economy and if we are, how does that affect art? What does a move toward an attention economy mean for the art world? What will change? What will go unchanged?