This week I’ll be speaking with creative entrepreneur Tara Agacayak on a panel about social media for the International Professional Women of Istanbul Network (IPWIN).

The happy trends of Web 2.0 online networking, collaborating, and user-generated content seem tailor-made for pro women like us who often face a more difficult career path abroad. Whether “trailing spouses” lacking a local work permit like Jo Parfitt recounts here or in some other way being at a geographic or cultural disadvantage is a common expat woman experience.

IN AN ATTENTION ECONOMY WE’RE NO LONGER OUT OF SIGHT
We’re used to relying on technology to fill the gaps in our expat operations so social media has the potential to level the playing field for the most far-flung female professionals:

• Social media works best the way women work best: it’s about making and tending personal connections
• Social media supports and consolidates the spread-out personal networks expats and global citizens have already initiated in their mobile lives
• Social media provides access to state-of-the-industry practices, trending thought, and leading players in our professions

So, as social networking renders overseas women like us visible and relevant, it’s a powerful tool of self-actualization. Our presence online becomes an advance calling card in life and work. We’re driven to fine-tune who we say we are, and how we behave, and where we appear online and who we choose to interact with, who our target audience is and how we do business. If we commit to social media, we evolve.

How has social media launched you?

Sunday links.

* If you’re still reading about health care, don’t miss the New York Times’s hundred-year history of health care reform in America and (via the indomitable Steve Benen) a few links on what the bill actually accomplishes. It’s also worth checking in with Steve Benen’s reading of John Boehner’s December 2008 declaration “The Future is Cao,” which looks a whole lot different now.

* I’ve been thinking about the Paul Begala editorial from the summer, “Progress Over Perfection,” and I think some nay-saying progressives could use the reminder.

No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers — a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn’t even cover the clergy. FDR’s Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn’t work, you got nothing from Social Security.

If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner’s circle: farmworkers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.

* Meanwhile, Ryan’s Twitter feed has this on the attention economy as “post-capitalism.”

The views I challenge include the notion that attention flows through the Internet chiefly to corporations, that attention only has significance if somehow monetized, that it is ultimately capitalists who exploit attention, and that money remains far more basic than attention.

Don’t worry, fellow citizens; capitalism is alive and well.

The Attention Economy

Thomas H. Davenport meets with John C. Beck for breakfast in Maine to discuss attention. After realizing that each one has many perspectives on the concept, they both decide to work together on a book addressing the situation in 2001. Though not the first to come up with the idea, both collect thoughts and sharpen the arguments with the help of various professionals and scholars dealing with the attention issue through their research and careers.  Working at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, both investigate the direction the attention economy is heading.

Attention is a resource, an asset, necessary in businesses to function and succeed. Through the reading that was somewhat viewed as a simple collection of thoughts and models, the two grasp several concepts and basic ideas. Being able to measure and allocate attention, they mention maintaining visual attention and captivating an audience with saturated visual attention. As a general population, we are easy to stray away from an idea or an advertisement. Understanding those psychological dimensions, becoming experts with the concept of reorganizing technologies, businesses can learn and adapt their techniques for retaining markets and consumers. Businesses can also maintain their employees’ productivity by realizing that the same monotonous actions will only drive a person away for that task. Otherwise, the result is attention slipping through the cracks, as well as money.

2001 – 2006 to Present: Still about the Allocation of the Attention Resource

The Economics of Attention

A more recent author Richard Lanham writes The Economics of Attention in 2006, which holds some similar ideas. Lanham’s argument points out the fact we are living in an information economy. Our economics lack the allocation of the scarce resource, attention. He also focuses around stylistic devices, stating them as “the tools” to attract and hold attention.
This sounds very familiar to my time in undergraduate studies. As a Computer Graphics Technology major, a large portion of our coursework revolves around understanding the human-computer interface factors, resulting with well-designed interface and the ability to hold an audience’s attention. Is this a coincidence? No surprises here, since our society is groomed for a large amount of short messages given to us in mere seconds.

I’ve been working with Domozych Media, an Albany web design, web sites, database development group focused entirely on forward-compatible and highly customizable web sites created with mobile devices in mind.

After class the other day I couldn’t stop bumping on a couple of ideas the first is professional vs. amateur and the second is the idea of the conflicting economies of money and attention. I can’t help but think that there is some relationship happening here that I can’t quite figure out. The tension between perceptions of amateur and professional were spurred by our guest speaker, Tracy’s observation that her publication the West Seattle Blog does not conceive of itself as a blog, but rather as a professional news outlet. I was surprised by her vehement denial of her blogger status especially when the name of the site is the West Seattle Blog. When and why did “blob” become a dirty word? I think it has to do with the implication of amateur that blog tends to carry with it; however, there are many blogs written by both so-called “professionals” and by amateurs.

Talking to @derek_belt during class we kicked around ideas about what the distinguishing factors between amateur and professional are. Is it simply the existence or lack of an agenda? Is it the perceived non-biased stance vs. blatant agenda pushing? While I think that in some ways these are all measures of professional and amateur I think there is a larger economic distinguisher as well—money. This prompted me to wonder if there are different measures of professional in an attention economy. In the monetary economy it seems that there is some relationship between being paid and being a professional. Payment in the attention economy comes from eyeballs rather than dollars, and it seems often these eyeballs are on the work of so-called amateurs rather than professionals. (ex: Chris Anderson’s comparison between his children’s desire to watch YouTube videos of lego animation Star Wars vs. the real movie) In a world where attention is the new currency and so-called amateurs seem to be getting a lot of it, are we turning the whole notion of professional vs. amateur on its head?

Michael Shapiro’s article “Open for Business” and Jodi’s blog post prompted me to think about the tension between attention and monetary economies . . . currency in one may very well block currency in another. An issue that hits on the core issue of paid online. Paid immediately cuts out some of the attention that may have been generated around a site. It is less likely for a paying member to link to a paid site because they know that many of their friends or readers may not have a paid membership and they will not want to diminish their credibility by posting a bad/inaccessible link. As an internet user we have become accustomed not only to free content but to quick content, and I’m not sure if the biggest barrier for paid is that you pay in money or that you also must pay in time. If I could attach my credit card to my computer so that if I wanted to buy a subscription to an online publication all I had to do was check a box and the transaction would immediately occur I would be much more likely to pay for the content that I want right now at this moment. For instance if I really want to listen to a song I will simply download it from iTunes and pay even though there is probably a free version if I took more time and effort to seek it out. Why? Because I live in both an attention and a monetary economy and my time often feels it is worth as much as my money.

Plus remember people are irrational! Paying isn’t a simple calculation of monetary value, but rather of personal perception of value. Find what they value, what they are willing, even happy to pay for and sell that. Maybe people would be willing to pay NOT to get advertising with their news, or maybe they would be willing to pay for more visibility into the process of how their news got to them. If we expect that people are going to become increasingly discern as the shear amount of content and information available grows exponentially as a function of the internet’s ability to create and disseminate, then perhaps they would value insights that will make their tilling of information easier and more certain. By this I mean that I might be willing to pay more for a news article that has merits than one that does not, especially if I plan to share this article with my social networks or blog readership. How might I determine the merits of a piece of writing?

1) Reputation of the writer

2) Faith in the process that led to the final product

So, an inclusion of links to other writing by the author, or an option to see an expanded version of the article that chronicled the process of research and investigation might increase the value of this particular version of the article.

Is there a danger of niche market news reporting? Will it result in a rich get richer and poor get poorer relationship within the media? If we write to the readership that is able and willing to pay what will happen to the issues and concerns of the readership that is not able and willing to pay?

Perhaps we will come to depend on non-profit news agencies to provide news of a more generally applicable and possible philanthropic nature? In the future perhaps watchdogs of government will become the sole purview of the non-profit sector rather than the self-proclaimed raison d’etre of the news media.

For a change, let’ have a conversation about the future… no facts, no data.

I just read the excellent article (IEEE computer Nov 08) from Bernardo Huberman (HP) on the attention economy.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry along with an excerpt.  It’s eyes opening:  Attention Economy

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41).

The social web is making the issue worst and quickly moves the challenge from information to attention.

We are indeed moving from the “Information Age” to the “Attention Age”:

If the “Search engine” with the eco-system that comes with it  is/was THE critical element in the Information age, it’s less the appropriate response to the “Attention Age”.

Real time search is the immediate challenge  but is still a marginal threat.  Attention on Twitter is barely better than on Google and spams, bots and old school marketers are already making their way into it.

So how would we define “Attention Engine”? :

For those who follow this blog regularly, you probably see a huge overlap with the right column and what eCairn is all about.

We’re the first Attention Engine out there.

Quelle: BULO

1. Become Incredibly Selfish.  Without You, there is nothing and attraction isn’t possible.
2. Unhook Yourself from the Future.  Attraction works in the present, not in the future.
3. Overrespond to Every Event.  By overresponding rather than overreacting, you evolve, which is very attractive.
4. Build a Superreserve in Every Area.  Having enough is not nearly enough for You to be irresistibly attractive.
5. Add Value Just for the Joy of It.  When you add value because you enjoy it, people are naturally attracted to You.
6. Affect Others Profoundly.  The more you touch others, the more attractive you’ll become.
7. Market Your Talents Shamelessly.  If you’re embarrassed about what you do, you won’t be very attractive.
8. Become Irresistibly Attractive to Yourself.  How can you attract others if you don’t feel irresistibly attracted to yourself?
9. Get a Fulfilling Life, not just an Impressive Lifestyle.  A great life is attractive;  a lifestyle is usually seductive.
10. Promise Little, Deliver Everything.  When you consistently deliver more than was expected, new customers are drawn to you.
11. Create a Vacuum that Pulls You Forward.  Being pulled forward is attractive;  pushing yourself forward isn’t.
12. Eliminate Delay.  Time is expensive;  using too much is very unattractive.
13. Get Your Personal Needs Met, Once and for All.  If you have unmet needs, you’ll attract others in the same position.
14. Thrive on the Details.  Subtleties, details, and nuances are more attractive than the obvious.
15. Tolerate Nothing.  When you put up with something, it costs you;  unnecessary costs are unattractive.
16. Show Others How to Please You.  Don’t make them guess.
17. Endorse Your Worst Weakness.  When you can accept and honor the worst part of yourself, you’re more accepting of others.
18. Sensitize Yourself.  The more you feel, the more you’ll notice and respond to the many opportunities in the present.
19. Perfect Your Environment.  The Attraction operating system is a sophisticated system and it requires a first-class environment.
20. Develop More Character than You Need.  Integrity is not enough to become irresistibly attractive.
21. See How Perfect the Present Really Is.  Especially when clearly it is not.
22. Become an Unconditionally Constructive Person.  High levels of respect are very attractive.
23. Orient Yourself Around Your Values.  When you spend your days doing what fulfills you, You are attractive.
24. Simplify Everything.  Abandoning nonessentials leaves more room for Attraction.
25. Master Your Craft.  The easiest way to become successful?  Become the best at what you do.
26. Recognize and Tell the Truth.  The truth is the most attractive thing of all, but it requires skills and awareness.
27. Have a Vision.  When you can see what’s coming, you don’t need to create a future.
28. Be Real, Be Human.  When you are human, You are attractive

Cristina’s additions:

• Learn and win and help others to win too, progress is attractive!
• Care and be interested of other people, listening and caring is attractive!
• Mobilize your energy, enthusiasm and power is attractive!

The Winning Helix says about attraction:

“To survive the jungle of attention demanding attractions the winner needs to focus, to choose the mental magnets that are beneficial and contribute the most to his process.”

Dette er et utdrag fra kommende bok – kommentarer?:
Den amerikanske økonomen Michael Goldhaber var tidlig ute med å analysere den økonomiske betydningen av oppmerksomhet. Han så på hvordan oppmerksomhet kunne konverteres til andre goder, hvordan den kunne overføres fra en person til en annen, og begynte å undersøke mer systematisk hvilke mekanismer det var som lå til grunn for dette.
Disse analysene ble videreført av Davenport og Beck i boka “The Attention Economy”, som også stilte spørsmål ved hva oppmerksomhet egentlig er. Hva er det som gjør at noe når vår oppmerksomhet, mens andre signaler ikke gjør det? Hvorfor legger vi for eksempel ikke merke til bilene som kjører på gata utenfor, eller suset fra ventilasjonsanlegget, eller hva barna egentlig sier etter at de har mast en stund på oss?
Alt dette har med vår begrensede kapasitet til å håndtere informasjon, eller rettere sagt signaler, å gjøre, og hvordan hjernen utenfor vår bevissthet siler og prioritere hvilke signaler som skal nå fram til bevissthetsnivået. Noe har med hvordan vi trener hjernen til å håndtere ulike typer signaler å gjøre, mens mye er overlatt til hjernens egen automatikk. Hva vi legger merke til er forskjellig, og det er forskjellig hvordan vi reagerer på det vi legger merke til. En blind vil høre andre lyder enn en seende, og en døv vil lese kroppsspråk på en annen måte enn en hørende. Men alle personer utvikler mekanismer for å hindre at oppmerksomheten overbelastes og at hjernen blir i stand til faktisk å behandle de signalene som kommer fram til den.
For alle mennesker finnes det en kapasitetsgrense, og når denne overskrides, bryter hele vår oppfatning av situasjonen sammen. Dersom det lyser 50 varsellamper samtidig, hva skal vi gjøre? Hva skjer dersom 5 personer snakker til deg på samme tid? Hvem skal du høre på? Hva skjer dersom du spiller to stykker musikk samtidig? Alle disse situasjonene oppleves som kaotiske, fordi de overskrider vår kapasitet for signalbehandling, og dermed også kommunikasjon.
Men noen signaler når gjennom kakafonien. Spørsmålet er hva som gjør at disse når gjennom?
Her er det mange mekanismer som trer i kraft, men felles for de fleste av dem er at de signalene som skiller seg ut er forskjellige fra de andre. De kan være av forskjellig styrke eller form, som når sykebilens sirener når oss gjennom trafikkstøyen. Faktorer som styrke, form, farger, bevegelse, relasjoner de inngår i med mer er med på å bestemme hva som når vår oppmerksomhet.
Gule reklameplakater er mer effektive enn grønne i den forstand at vi lettere legger merke til dem. Dette skyldes ikke bare at gul har større kontrast til omgivelsene enn grønt, men også for en stor grad hva de enkelte fargene signaliserer, og hvilke assosiasjoner som er knyttet til dem.
I Norge og det meste av Europa er sorg knyttet til sort farge. Det vil derfor vekke oppmerksomhet dersom du kommer i en begravelse iført hvit dress. I Japan er hvitt sorgens farge, og det er følgelig andre farger som vil skape samme effekt som i Europa. Hva som skaper oppmerksomhet er derfor også i stor grad kulturelt betinget.
Ett av Goldhabers poenger er at oppmerksomhet også kan føre til økonomisk uttelling. Det ser en lett i sportens og musikkens verden. Kari Traa var en svært god idrettsutøver også før hun framsto i relativt lite klær i et magasin. Men det var først etter at hun hadde fått den oppmersomheten dette førte til at hun ble superstjerne. Og hva med Marianne Aulie? Er hun en stor kunstner, eller er det oppmerksomheten hun har fått gjennom diverse konflikter med kritikere, annonsekampanjer i avisene og stadig oftere opptreden i kjendissfæren som har skaffet henne oppmerksomheten?
Madonna spiller i mange sammenhenger på effekter som tiltrekker seg oppmerksomhet, og som ikke har noe med hennes sangferdigheter å gjøre. Og tilsvarende finnes det en rekke artister som greier å holde medienes oppmerksomhet ved å spille på andre sider enn det de egentlig driver med, om det er fotball, ski eller musikk.
Det har til og med vokst fram en egen gruppe av mennesker, som er mest berømt fordi de er berømte. I Norge er glamourmodellene en slik gruppe. En av dem fikk metervis av spalteoppmerksomhet fordi hun påstod hun hadde vært til sengs med Robby Williams, noe som på det sterkeste ble benektet av offeret selv. Men oppmerksomhet fikk hun likevel.
Mange av disse personene har få eller ingen grenser for hvordan de greier å få denne oppmerksomheten. Norske modeller har i likhet med Paris Hilton sørget for å få oppmerksomhet gjennom pornografien, noe som igjen gjør at de kan overføre denne oppmerksomheten til andre livsarenaer.
David Beckham fikk en avtale med en fotballklubb i Los Angeles, verdt over en milliard kroner. Er han den beste fotballspilleren, eller er det andre sider ved han som gjør at de kan sette en slik verdi på han? Kanskje hans stormfulle ekteskap med eks Spice-girl? Eller koblingen til ulike barnevakter og andre vakre damer?
I alle fall kan denne oppmerksomheten lett omsettes til penger. Da Real Madrid kjøpte Beckham fra Manchester United for noen hundre millioner kroner, ble det solgt trøyer med Beckhams navn og nummer på for en sum som var høyere enn det klubben betalte for han, allerede før han hadde spilt en eneste kamp. Mange ville dele hans oppmerksomhet, og skaffe seg egen oppmerksomhet gjennom å bære en trøye med hans bumerke.
I oppmerksomhetsøkonomien blir det stadig viktigere å skille seg ut fra de andre på ulike måter. Og siden det på svært mange områder er flinke utøvere, er det andre aspekter enn faglig flinkhet som er med på å bestemme hvem som får oppmerksomhet.
Ett av Goldhabers poenger er at oppmerksomhet er det nye knapphetsgodet. Vi har begrensede evner til å dele vår oppmerksomhet og vi har en begrenset mengde tid til disposisjon. Dette gjør at vår evne til å konsumere er begrenset, enten det gjelder digitale eller mer materielle goder. I prinsippet vil det også være knapphet på visse materielle goder, mens det aldri vil være det på digitale goder. Og oppmerksomhet er så absolutt et knapphetsgode, et gode det er absolutt knapphet på, siden hver enkelt av oss jo bare har 24 timer per døgn til disposisjon.
Siden har Kevin Kelly, kjent som tidligere redaktør av Wired og forfatter av “New Rules for the New Economy”, også sett nærmere på fenomenet oppmerksomhet. Og spørsmålet han tar opp handler om hvordan en som leverandør av varer og tjenester skal kunne tiltrekke seg oppmerksomhet. En måte å gjøre det på er ved å øke informasjonsinnholdet i tjenesten som er knyttet til varen, altså tillegge varene assosiative egenskaper. Dette er en teknikk vi vanligvis forbinder med merkevarebygging, noe som kan ses på som to sider av samme sak. En kjent merkevare skaper automatisk oppmerksomhet.
En annen måte å skape oppmerksomhet på er ved å gjøre bruk av en attraktor. En attraktor kan være en hendelse eller handling som i seg selv tiltrekker oppmerksomhet, og som brukes til å overføre denne oppmerksomheten til andre forhold. Et eksempel på dette er når flere musikkfestivaler sommeren 2008 brukte en stripper og pornoskuespiller til å få oppmerksomhet om musikkfestivalen, eller når et par hadde samleie på scenen under Kvartfestivalen. Hvor vellykkede slike stunt er, kan selvsagt diskuteres, men det skaper i alle fall oppmerksomhet i form av medieomtale, en oppmerksomhet som også kan overføres til andre forhold, blant annet penger.
I industrisamfunnet kjøpte vi varer og tjenester i butikker som hadde en bestemt geografisk lokasjon, knyttet til “stedet”.Handelen og konkurransen var dermed begrenset til akkurat denne lokasjonen. Du kjørte ikke til nabobygda for å hente et lass grus, selv om det var 100 kroner billigere der, og du dro ikke særlig langt for å klippe deg. Lokale markeder og lokale monopoler bestemte både priser og tilgang til en lang rekke varer og tjenester. Og konkurransen var begrenset til dem som faktisk etablerte seg på samme fysiske lokasjon.
I det digitale nettsamfunnet er det ingen slike begrensninger. Det er mange som selger bøker på nettet, og det er mange som selger sportsutstyr. I nettsamfunnet er derfor kampen om oppmerksomheten helt annerledes enn i industrisamfunnet. Bits kjenner ingen grenser. Det er vanskelig å sette opp de gamle geografiske sperresystemene, som for eksempel gjaldt for CDer og DVDer, der verden var delt inn i ulike teknologiske og prismessige soner. I nettsamfunnet kan du sitte i Norge og handle på iTunes på samme måte som amerikanske borgere. Med en fiktiv amerikanske postadresse og konto hos PayPal, ett av de mest utbredte digitale pengesystemene i verden, blir du klassifisert som amerikaner av datasystemene. Dermed kan du handle musikk og film til samme priser som dem også.
Oppmerksomhet er altså et knapphetsgode blant forbrukerne. For mens det blir stadig større overflod av tilbud på digitalt innhold vi kan konsumere, er forbrukernes samlede oppmerksomhet relativt konstant. Riktignok blir vi flinkere til å dele oppmerksomheten mellom ulike kilder, som når vi sitter og ser et TV-program med laptopen på fanget, noe undersøkelser har vist at to av fem som ser på TV faktisk gjør.
Men også denne situasjonen er i ferd med å endre seg, for TV-kanalene bygger stadig mer avanserte feedbackmekanismer inn i programregien. 2009 var året da Twitter fikk kritisk masse av brukere i Norge. Og siden det var valgår og Obama hadde hatt vesentlig suksess med bruken av sosiale nettverksemedier i det amerikanske presidentvalget året før, var viljen til å prøve de nye mediene stor. Derfor kom etterhvert flere av statsrådene på Twitter, og i England opprettet mediene et Tweetometer, der velgerne kunne følge med på aktivitetsnivået til de ulike partiene.
I utspørringen av partilederne høsten 2009 ble Twitter brukt som “returkanal” av redaksjonen. Seerne kunne bruke #velg09 som tag på twittermeldingene, og dermed kommentere sendingene på samme arena, de kunne stille spørsmål til deltakerne og de kunne framstå som en “sverm” av velgere som brukte sin oppmerksomhet på den samme situasjonen.
Dette er et interessant fenomen, fordi teknologiene tilrettelegger for at en også kan synliggjøre hva ulike mennesker faktisk bruker oppmerksomhet på. Dette kan en gjøre ikke bare i Norge, men globalt gjennom en rekke tjenester som bruker dataene fra Twitter, som analyserer dem, finner trender i hvilke tagger eller kodeord som har økende bruk, som minker i bruk osv.
Gjennom nye kommunikative tjenester i det digitale nettsamfunnet, knyttes forbindelser på tvers av de tidligere mediene. Nye nettverksbaserte tjenester som Facebook, MySpace, Twitter og andre skaper en infrastruktur som delvis erstatter de tradisjonelle mediene, og delvis supplerer dem. Eksempelet med bruk av Twitter i valgsendingene illustrerer dette siste poenget, og når Martine Aurdal i Dagbladet twittrer fra valgsendingene er det eksempel på det første poenget. Aurdals artikkel i Dagbladet neste dag, er gjerne sydd over observasjonene som ble twittret på direkten.
Twitter er en tjeneste som fordeler oppmerksomhet, og som på mange måter bringer et nytt element inn i oppmerksomhetsøkonomien. Gjennom designen av selve systemet må du selv skaffe deg en skare av tilhengere eller “followers” som det heter på Twitterspråket. Og du må også selv bygge opp en portefølge av avsendere som du følger med på. Twitter kan dermed ses som en grunnleggende infrastruktur for fordeling av oppmerksomhet, og det er dine egne preferanser som bestemmer hvordan dette nettverket blir seende ut over tid, og som bestemmer hvordan du vil bruke det og hva du kan få ut av det.

David Ulin, writing for the LA Times, perfectly soliloquizes the problems he’s been having sitting down to read.  I’ve been struggling with the same thing for about two years now:

So what happened? It isn’t a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else’s world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine. Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves. This is what Conroy was hinting at in his account of adolescence, the way books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise.

Such a state is increasingly elusive in our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted. Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know.

I won’t bullshit anyone: my issue is that I’d rather be reading feeds, articles, posts and writing my own stuff than reading longform books. I have amazing books sitting on the shelf – Infinite Jest, Consider the Lobster, Brain Rules, Transcend, The Ultramind Solution – and I just can’t get to them.  But I can read David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College commencement speech twice a week.  That’s what it’s come to.

When I was younger – before the hyper-networked age came along and ruined those us prone to such ruining – I read books at a voracious rate.  Today, even getting through a really easy murder mystery is next to impossible.

(To be fair, the aforelinked book sucked, which might make it an unfair example.  But you get the point.)

If I were smart, I would have devoted myself to Infinite Summer.  Maybe that would have helped.

But I doubt it.

You want to catch your market’s attention for your product or brand but it seems that you can hardly budge through the competition. It is rather difficult to accomplish especially when people are so distracted with other important things. Their attention is so limited and your marketing resources are limited too. But do not be dismayed there are ways to achieve success in this attention economy we have today.

1. Explore your Options:
Marketing involves expenses, especially in the attention economy, and if you’re just starting up your business you would want to maximize and explore every possibilities so you can minimize cost. You may want to delay your investment a bit to see and learn from those who have already been on the competition. Gather information on their mistakes and their strategies. This will give you a better leverage and save money in the attention economy.

2. Develop Relationship:
Having a satisfied market is the key for a sustainable business. You can achieve this through building a relationship with your consumers. Learn to listen to their feedbacks and find ways to adjust according to what they need. By doing this you can gain their trust and confidence in your brand. This is a good attention economy strategy because you already have your market’s attention.

3. Be Dynamic:
In the attention economy, people’s wants and needs can easily change. You must be dynamic enough to be ready for these changes and adapt to the current needs of your market. Always be on an alert and listen to your market. If you are not open to any changes, your success will be short-lived.

Other Related Resources:

• Attention economy encyclopedia topics
• New Attention Economy – Exploring Opportunities
• Attention Economy – Learn to Succeed with It

…for the whole truth about almost any important subject is incompatible with brevity… 

                                                              Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Out of the mess of reality, a journalist constructs something Accurate, Brief, and Clear that can be absorbed by the audience in a limited amount of time and space. On the Web, the Brief and the Clear become exponentially more urgent.

As Paul Bradshaw cites in his excellent Online Journalism Blog, there is hard data that shows people read more slowly on the Internet than they do in print. It’s the lower resolution of computer screens that does it.  So to reach an online audience, Web journalists must be especially good abbreviators. 

In the process, the writer, editor, and producer often have to leave certain things out or gloss them over. What’s special about the Web is that what is cut out or glossed over is not neccesarily wasted or lost; more on that below.

It’s not just journalists, of course, who have learned to be brief.   Mobile devices have taught us the value of what I call hyper-abbreviation and many call SMS language.  We update our Web statuses with our cell phones. We write one-line e-mails without punctuation.  We are all about getting the point across, and the grammar and syntax of our school years can be damned.  We might even be wrecking English!

So is it evil to be shortening our communications all over the place? Aren’t we losing out on truth?  Only if we accept the premise that truth is incompatible with brevity. We have seen that the completely bogus is often spelled out at length.  And repeated. And repeated.

On the flip side, we see brief messages of truth all the time.  One of the best examples is that of grad student James Karl Buck, who was detained while attending a political demonstration.  His one-word Tweet: arrested. Of course there was more to it, but for all practical purposes, “arrested” was the truth that Mr. Buck urgently needed to convey as he was being hauled away by Egyptian authorities. And news outlets summarily fleshed out the larger story, using Buck’s Tweet as a starting point.

The beauty of today’s media landscape is that although news must be Accurate and Clear at all times, it can be very Brief in some places (Twitter, nightly news program, Gawker), and not as brief in others (magazine features or documentaries).  We’ve managed to spread information out over the different kinds of media, often telling larger stories in smaller pieces, across platforms.  This is what I mean about information not being lost or wasted. The information may just need to find a home elsewhere. Sometimes you write something you think you’ll submit for a Pulitzer, sometimes simply FTW. And that’s part of the truth.

Social media is the reason we’re lucky to be alive in these first years of the new millennium. Social media a global network of conversations with old friends and new friends, sex, cool products, a visual and aural feast, and an all-around good time. And, if you do it right, you can even make money doing it.  Right?

• You can post a link to your anti-hipster blog on Facebook, and sell ads on the page views that brings.

• You can put some of your soul songs on MySpace and direct your fans to buy ‘em.

• You can build an online resume on LinkedIn and end up with a lucrative job.

• You can talk to your adventurous friend in Nepal using Skype.

Or, in the words of Greg Davies at SocialMediaRage:

What a fucking joke.

Yes, there are “social media web sites” (Digg, MySpace, Twitter, etc); but there is no “Social Media”, okay?

Let us call it by its real name, shall we?

THE INTERNET.

Whatever you call it, social media is obnoxious.  It is because, at a certain level, it requires communication on the Web to be treated as currency.  That is the case even though most sites we’d call “social media sites” are entirely free, and the currency involved is often not money but a change in popularity, reputation, or social influence.

It’s obnoxious because even if I’m not a spammer and do not want to sell you teeth whitener or all-over deodorant, I usually have something to gain from your attention (even though according to one rule of the Attention Economy, if you’re not getting anything out of it, you’ll stop paying attention).  To put it bluntly, social media can turn pretty cool people into attention mongers.

But I participate in social media anyway. Mostly, because I like to be heard.  I want other people to know what I like and don’t like, and I think my opinion is sharp enough that it should be adopted by other people.  I like to share. I like to promote myself and the organizations I represent. And one of these days, I’d like to make some money doing it.

Of course, sometimes it just feels good to be obnoxious.

On the previous article about attention economy, you have learned that attention is now a scarce commodity. You may now realize for your marketing strategy to succeed you must be able to capture the attention of your niche market. But the real challenge that poses to both marketers and businessmen like yourself is how to rise above the competition especially during this attention economy. These simple strategies will help you get the edge with your rivals in the attention economy.

1. Investigate:
Try to delay your business a little and let others invest first. This is especially important if you are just new in the business. Observe and gather up experiences from those who have tried ahead of you and learn from them. Identify both their strengths and weaknesses in handling the attention economy. This way you can learn a lot without spending more. But do not delay much or you’ll end catching up to many successful big businesses.

2. Be Dynamic:
On your first try on the business, you will have a greater chance to succeed that’s if you followed the first strategy which is to investigate first. But having success does not mean everything is done. You must continuously evolve and adjust your business depending on the needs of your consumers. During this attention economy, it is important to make your consumers feel they have your attention. It makes them happy and when they are happy they will love more your brand.

3. Create Relationship:
This is most important part if you want to have a stable future for your brand or business in this attention economy. A relationship is a two way process. You must also give in order to receive. If you treat your consumers this way then you can build trust to your brand. Learn to interact more with your customers. Listen to what they are suggesting for your brand. Give them the attention they need and they will give it back to you in return.

There are still many other ways to cope up with the attention economy. Whatever approach you may apply for your business, it is important that you must center your efforts in creating a long and lasting happy relationship with your consumers. It is the best formula for success in every type of business.

Other Resources:

• Simple Guide to Attention Economy
• Opportunities with New Attention Economy

Technological advancement has made our lives easier and our jobs a lot simple. It brought to the development of new media which greatly influenced and transformed the world of marketing and business until today. Throughout these great benefits, people have created filters to block the influx of marketing ads. Attention became a hard to obtain. If you have a small business, online or offline, it will be good for you to have this simple guide during this attention economy.

What is attention? It is a process where you direct your mind to a specific object or person. It needs a certain amount of concentration to give a full attention. People today have a much lesser attention span. They have so many things in their mind and so much anxieties and worries about life and work. If it is not interesting enough, they will definitely immediately lose their attention with it.

It is vital to achieve attention in marketing your business. It is what you need if you want people to know and recognize that your business, brand or product existed in this world. But it is not something which you can easily accomplish. You may need some good internet marketing to get this done.

To get the best in handling the attention economy, it is better to understand it first. What is attention economy? It is a condition wherein attention has become a scarce commodity. As a result, marketers are focusing more time and efforts in getting their consumers to consume their ads. Since new media created much leverage to marketers, the competition also became stiffer. It would be a great challenge now to surpass the marketing players in your niche market.

What could you do then to get attention? Making a common marketing ad in a niche market which has countless competitors would be a bad idea. Your ad must have a distinct characteristic to catch the eyes of your market. Try to be creative and original. Never copy an entire ad, especially if you’re just a beginner. There many ways and ideas that you can use for your business. We know that exploring opportunities with new attention economy may not be easy and it may take time. But you have to be patient and endure, because at the end the rewards are good.

Links to Some Resources Used:

• Attention Definition
• Wiki -Attention Economy

Information may be free these days, but two important resources are dwindling fast: time and attention.

Herbert Simon, an American economist and psychologist, first articulated the concept of the “attention economy” in 1971.  He wrote: “Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it”.

Definitions and theories about the attention economy have evolved since then, and today the concept is continually talked about in business, PR, and social media websites and magazines.

How should a business strategically position itself in the attention economy? Let us look at two key distinctions of this concept.  The first distinction is based on choice.  According to ReadWriteWeb, a popular web technology site, the consumer can choose where their attention is “spent”.  The second distinction is relevancy.  The information must be relevant to the consumer’s interests, or he/she will go elsewhere.

To read the full post follow this link

Sending millions of information can be done instantly and with little cost with the help of new media technology these days. Making and distributing ads would require less effort and expenses for marketers. It can easily be abused and used to spam information to the market. Can a business continue to exist with the attention economy?

Attention is the first stage for switching your niche market to your brand. Without getting attention, you cannot simply make someone to take interest in your brand. Once attention is acquired, build up your brand’s influence. After that your market can easily be persuaded to act on buying your brand.

The attention economy is described here by wiki in a somewhat easy manner. “The problem of getting consumers to consume advertising”, as quoted in the wiki article, is the main concern of attention economy today. It has made marketing a brand is rather cheap and affordable that it has also multiplied marketing competitors. In order to stand out from the rest, your must have a unique marketing campaign.

Since attention is rather scarce these days, it is important that your ads to stand out from the rest. Be imaginative and keep away from becoming a copycat yourself. No doubt, you can do better than that. You can create your own unique idea by learning from other top ads.. You can save your marketing efforts by creating your own unique ads.

The attention economy has negative effects on marketing, but it does not mean that you can never be successful in your marketing efforts. Deal with the problem by looking for ways to have your ads stand out from the rest. Just invest your time on a niche where you are most knowledgeable at and confident enough to carry.

You can find additonal resources here:

• 3 Best New Media Strategies Tips
• Exploring Opportunities with New Attention Economy – New Media Strategies

Internet superstar and all-round bundle of awesomeness Danah Boyd has a new post up about an experience she had at a conference in Italy, where she was sternly and publicly rebuked for ‘not paying attention’ during a lecture. Of course, while she was ‘goofing off’, Boyd also:

“had looked up six different concepts he had introduced (thank you Wikipedia), scanned two of the speakers’ papers to try to grok what on earth he was talking about, and used Babelfish to translate the Italian conversations taking place on Twitter and FriendFeed in attempt to understand what was being said. Of course, I had also looked up half the people in the room (including the condescending man next to me) and posted a tweet of my own.”

But while the piece starts out as what I suppose is a defence of techno-multitasking, it moves towards considering the effects of a persistent, accessible and ubiquitous network of information. On some level – and even the iPhone is starting to bring us towards this – ‘the network’ enables the creation of a kind of cyborg, one with constant access to both data and databases, computers and computing power. This future-fantastic world is underpinned by a constant backchannel of chatter, a subcutaneous, pre-conscious layer of speech that hovers and hums in the background while conversations happen over and above and around it. Right now, this is probably best exemplified by Twitter, and having seen how much it enlivens and enriches a conference, I can tell you this is far less scary than it sounds.

The other interesting thing here is what happens to knowledge, both in its application and value. It seems that a database approach to knowledege will become key: that ’smarts’ will now be about putting together knowledge that everyone else has access to in new, different, and newly usable ways, and I think it’s here that we might see a shift from the dominance of narrative to the primacy of the database.

The value of knowledge is an interesting question too. What will happen when knowledge is everywhere, accessible to everyone? A friend likes to argue that we’ll see a ‘return’ – but not – to a kind of oral culture. And that, I think, is about a good a guess as any I’ve heard.

Andreas Göldi schreibt auf netzwertig.com einen sehr interessanten Artikel, warum bloße Aufmerksamkeitsheischerei im Internet nicht zu monetarisierbaren Umsatz führen muss und kann. Warum oftmals deplazierte Werbung, die zwar Aufmerksamkeit auslöst, aber nicht zu überzeugen vermag, nicht funktioniert verdeutlicht er dabei sehr gut an einem kleinen Beispiel:

Wir begeben uns auf die Facebook-Homepage, um uns über alte Freunde zu informieren, nicht, um von irgendwas anderem überzeugt zu werden. Die Metapher ist nicht die des Einkaufszentrums, sondern die einer Einladung zum Abendessen bei Freunden. Und wer an einem solchen Anlass den andern etwas zu verkaufen versucht, wird wahrscheinlich nicht mehr eingeladen werden.

Daraus schliesst er eine bemerkenswerte Schlussfolgerung:

Darin steckt aber ganz offensichtlich auch eine Chance. Der Trick besteht darin, die Benutzer zu erwischen, wenn sie in Kauflaune sind oder zumindest in einer Umgebung, welche sie für den Konsum einstimmt. Die Werbeindustrie ist aber offenbar weit entfernt davon, diese Vorgänge zu verstehen, weil in traditionellen Medien eben ein Leser ein Leser ist.

Aber irgendwann werden die Werbekunden verstehen, dass smartes Micro-Targeting eine viel bessere Form der Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt als die, welche eine schnöde Produktseite auf Facebook oder ein lahmes Inserat auf einer MySpace-Seite gewinnen kann.

Ich möchte diese Gedanken noch dahingehend ergänzen und darauf verweisen, dass besonders aus dem Neuromarketing weitergehend noch folgende Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen sind:

• Das Zusammengesetzte ist besser zu merken als das Einfache.
• Kurzfassungen sind längeren Fassungen nicht ohne weiteres überlegen.
• Eindrücke über mehrere Sinne haften besser als solche, die nur über einen Sinn wirken.
• Gruppierte Dinge sind leichter aufzufassen als ungruppierte.
• Mehrere Eigenschaften eines und desselben Wahrnehmungsdings helfen dieses stärker einprägen.
• Gerüche haften besonders stark im Gedächtnis.
• Der Tastsinn macht Begriffe und Vorstellungen plastisch.
• Rhythmus und Reim erhöhen den Merkwert.
• Von mehreren Dingen wird das Bedeutsamste in erster Linie bemerkt.
• Sinnvolles ist dem Sinnlosen überlegen.
• Jede Einsicht in einen Zusammenhang verursacht eine besonders nachhaltige Eintragung ins Gedächtnis.
• Jede wiederholte Wahrnehmung des Gleichen führt zu einer Vertiefung des Eindrucks im Gedächtnis.
• Jede Abweichung von der Norm erhöht den Aufmerksamkeits- und damit den Gedächtniswert.
• Dinge, die eine “Primitivperson” beeindrucken, haften stärker.
• Werbliche Einschaltungen mit einem wöchentlichen Intervall führen – gemessen an der Anzahl der Einschaltungen – zu einer anderen Erinnerung an die Werbung als Einschaltungen mit einem vierwöchentlichen Intervall.
• Werbung wird rascher vergessen, wenn der Konsument ihr nicht beständig ausgesetzt ist.
• Mit der Anzahl der werblichen Einschaltungen sinkt die Vergessensrate.
• Wenn das Werbeziel darin besteht, kurzfristig eine maximale Zahl von Werbeerinnerern zu erreichen, so empfiehlt sich eine Massierung der
• Werbewiederholungen in der Zeit; ist dagegen eine hohe durchschnittliche Gedächtniswirkung an die Werbung während eines ganzen Jahres das Ziel, so ist eine Gleichverteilung der Wiederholungen über den Zeitraum ratsam.

Original Image sourced from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dickuhne/71015015/sizes/m/

*this is a paper I wrote for university this semester just passed- an attempt to correlate the random shite that spews from my brain in a vaguely coherent fashion*

MEDIA HYPE AND THE POLITICAL ATTENTION ECONOMY

The pervasive and ubiquitous nature of media hype validates the notion that it is a fundamental means by which a media event garnishes the user’s attention. The immediately manifest example of this is the case presented by political communication. In particular, the 2008 US election provides an exemplar situation of the importance of media hype and the impact that pre-emptive media attention had on the final result. It is through this specific media event that the nature of media hype as an attention device will be investigated.

This paper will undertake a slightly alternative approach as a means of examining some of the fundamental processes that shape our understanding of and negotiation with media hype. It will present the fundamental theory of general relativity and the spacetime continuum as an instrumental allegory for conceptualising the way media hype develops and operates. By equating media and communication theory with explicitly ‘scientific’ theory, attention is drawn to the crucial temporal and spatial implications of media hype and our interaction with it. The paper will demonstrate the inherent correlation identifiable between general relativity and media hype and how this can serve as a useful way of conceptualising media hype. The mediascape within in which media hype operates will also be examined and quantified and the way in which this space has been altered particularly through the use of ‘new media’. The existence of space also births the opportunity for the existence of ‘noise’ and coupled with the potential of the collective intelligence will be considered particularly in terms of their political ramifications.

‘General relativity’ is a theory that was developed in an attempt to comprehend the apparent effect that the gravity of objects with a significant mass appeared to have on ‘physical’ and time and space (Plabenski & Krasinski 2007 p1). It builds upon ‘special relativity’ that in essence dictates that the speed of light is constant for every observer. Each observer operates in his or her own inertial frame of reference and everything in his or her immediate vicinity belongs to that frame. The crucial difference however is that motion is relative to each frame of reference. To the observer viewing another inertial frame of reference, the procession of time and motion of the secondary observer will appear distorted.  Critical to the theory is the fourth-dimensional continuum of spacetime formulated by Hermann Minkowski to essentially place the occurrence of ‘events’ in space. For the purposes of general relativity, spacetime is visualised as a malleable, flat sheet. When objects are placed upon that sheet, their gravitational field will indent and distort spacetime, an occurrence most evident in the way it distorts the passage of light.

The passage of light is the crux of the analogy. As it is in the ‘physical’ world, light is essentially the transmission of information for without the reception of light from an event, in effect that event has not occurred in the inertial frame of the observer. If we equate that observer to the media user and the transmission of light to the transmission of information, we can draw a parallel between an event’s occurrence in the physical world and in media space. Likewise Minowski’s four-dimensional spacetime continuum equates to the topological, cybernetic media system (discussed hereafter). The effect of social and political entities upon the topological mediascape is represented by the effect that gravitational fields have on the spacetime plane.

Hypothetically, if you could somehow manage to accelerate faster than the speed of light, it is considered not impossible to travel time (in relation to the observer watching your movement) (Graunbaum  p70). Given that light is the transmission of information: what results when that information is transmitted faster than the occurrence of a given event, in this case, a media event? This notion demonstrates the phenomenon that is media hype. Media hype involves the projection of an event before it occurs before itself in the psyche of a given collective. This projection can initiate from the proprietors of a media event or from the consciousness of the users, either way this projection is a consciously constructed representation of the product. 

The disregard for ‘real’ time and space is proclaimed as one of the defining characteristics of new media information exchange (Abrahamson et al., 1988 p4-5). But rather than a disregard, I would propose that new media in fact appropriates these two fundamental elements with which we negotiate environments. Spaces induced by media use are inherently, all though not exclusively, intangible and therefore initially are generally not assigned equal value in terms of their substantiality as their concrete counterparts. However, understanding the very ‘real’ and dynamic nature of these spaces is crucial to grasping the extent of their influence, particularly within the domain of political communication.

Pertinent to this understanding is to recognise the indivisible, symbiotic relationship not only between media time and media space, but also to the ‘physical’ world. In this context the physical world is not only that which exists in the corporeal realm, but the social and political entities whose actuality we readily accept. For instance, although they are not tangible, we accept that our relationships exist and have bearing on our environment. Historically media space has been ‘characterised by a dangerous distance from the world of the flesh’ (Terranova, p42), associated with a dichotomy of irrefutable virtuality/reality. This misconception has resulted in the dismissal of the crucial ‘physical’ component in media space.  To overcome the limitations of this dichotomy, it is more constructive to visualise media space as a complex, cybernetic, topological system.  Here the ‘topological formations’ are formed by the flow of information fed into the system by the presence of the aforementioned ‘physical’ entities. Thus the constant interplay of virtual/real components interact together to create meaning and thus create space. This idea is intensified by Couldry and McCarthy:

‘..the artefactual existence of media forms within social space, the links that media objects forge between spaces, and the (no less real) cultural visions of a physical space transcended by technology and emergent virtual pathways of communication.’ (MediaSpace, p2)

Where there is space however, there is an opportunity for infection. Infection in terms of communication theory is termed ‘noise’ i.e. they are the peripheral actors that corrupt a message and alter whatever it may have originally intended to have been.  Noise inherently thrives within and cultivates the topological media scape and carries with it the ability to change our perception of the ‘physical’ world.   Despite the negative implications of corruption, noise provides the opportunity for the manipulation of representation and therefore meaning. Evidently the control of meaning is essential to the production of political messages. B. Axford presents the term ‘technologically enhanced politics’ (New Media and Politics, p53) to illustrate the copulation between political entities and the affordances of new media to inject the desired agenda into representations of media events. In the technologically enhanced political arena, the image and representation is placed in greater esteem than policy and thus the aestheticisation of political life is of paramount importance. This significance of promotion in politics is no more evident than in the astonishingly vast amount of capital injected into the media campaigns of the leading candidates of the 2008 US election. On television advertising alone Barack Obama and John McCain spent US$250 million and US$128 million respectively (Kaid, p418), even more remarkable when considered the average length of a sound byte has been reduced from 42 to less than ten seconds (Axford, p52).

Reciprocally the realm of spatial noise does not fall solely within the domain of carefully constructed media representations but also encompasses attempts to pre-emptively deconstruct a media event’s reception before it has ‘occurred’. In this way the media space is pre-cultivated to negotiate and interact with an event in a certain way. Given the dominance of the image in new media culture, the mediascape is saturated across all platforms with visual references to a given political entity. The most pertinent example of this was perhaps the development of the Obama 08 iPhone application (Kaid p419). The iPhone, the supreme advocate of the cybernetic ethos, provided the opportunity to seamlessly and constantly inject the visual iconography of the Obama 08 Campaign into the user’s daily life. Because of this incessant pre-conditioning, when the event does actually occur, in this case the Obama’s victory, it is received with a pre-cursing agenda or at the very least resigned acceptance. The user is so accustomed to the saturation of Obama within their own political microhabitat, when he assumed the presidency; the occurrence of the event had in effect already taken place before it had in ‘reality’.

This appropriation of time presents itself in a crucial and unique fashion in the dynamic, topological mediascape: in simultaneity. Although simultaneity would suggest a disregard for time and space, as mentioned previously it merely appropriates our negotiation with it. The very structure of the network implies an eradication of hierarchy and the democratisation of access and information value. This also entails a democratisation of the user’s experience of time. Given the user’s access and exposure to media ‘events’ that occur on the new mediascape particularly when mediated through social networking, this gives the impression of everything occurring simultaneously. Paul Virilio extends this further into the field of political communication. He believes that this simultaneity results in a sense of fatalism in the user experience. If everything occurs concurrently, there is no room for cause and effect and therefore a sense of inevitability ensues. Inevitability facilitates the breeding ground for media hype. A resignation to or pre-acceptance of a political outcome, in this case the outcome of the 2008 US election, already occurs before itself in the user experience. The continuous projection of the media event through online discussion and engagement embeds itself firmly in the collective psyche long before it has ‘actually’ taken place. 

Another dimension to regard in the multifaceted notion of media space is collective intelligence. The championed proponent of Web 2.0 is the concept of interactivity and it through this process of information exchange that new knowledge is formulated and added to the communal information reservoir. The blogosphere is the obvious example of a situation where through the interaction and exchange of user information, more content and therefore more ‘intelligence’ is produced.  But this goes beyond merely creating more content and serves to consolidate Anderson’s ‘imagined community’, a task that were previously the domain of mass communication broadcasters. Pierre Levy skilfully documents this shift by proclaiming ‘the new humanism’ (Levy, Collective Intelligence, p1) where we have evolved from the old humanist mantra; ‘I think’ to today’s ‘we think’.

I would extend this notion further to encompass the notion ‘we cultivate’. In order for media hype to ensue, the transmission of information needs to precede the occurrence of an event and embed itself within a collective psyche. It is implicit in the very nature of network dynamics that the audience is not merely passively receptive to the proprietors of a media event but actively contributing to the propagation of media hype. The most immediately apparent way within which information is pre-emptively transmitted throughout the collective consciousness is by means of viral media. Viral media has been traditionally manufactured and distributed by the user but counter intuitively (and often covertly) by media proprietors. It is postulated that a pivotal moment in deciding the end result of the 2008 election was Katie Couric’s interview CBS Evening Show interview with Sarah Palin (Wegner &MacManus p427). Palin’s lacklustre performance was circulated ab nauseum not only on broadcast networks but also within the blogosphere and user producer facilitators like youtube.  Spoofs of the performance (perhaps most notably Tina Fey’s parody of Palin) were copied, manipulated, appropriated but most importantly spread throughout the data sphere and thus firmly implementing a user-generated representation in the collective user consciousness.

The cultivation of collective political intelligence as demonstrated by the 2008 US election is not limited to party promoters. The Drudge Report is an influential aggregated source of political blogs that documented 798 million views during the month of October before the US elections were held (Kaid p420). The formidability of collective intelligence has ironically affected the proprietors of media events to counteractively respond by subsuming the modes of communication traditionally the domain of the information recipients. Perlmutter documents the case of Obama’s 2008 personal blog post regarding his defence for Democrats who voted for John Roberts’s nomination in the Supreme Court (Blogwars p187). The post was reportedly reflected upon for weeks thereafter as the use of a democratic and communal information channel seemingly equated Obama with ‘the people’ and therefore effectively pre-emptively embedding himself within the collective consciousness before the elections had occurred. 

It is crucial to keep in mind that media hype is generated through the input and exchange of information into the mediascape. Given the inherent democratic structure of the dynamic network, it is also important to remember that the generation of this information is not limited to the realm of media proprietors but also emanates through the exchange of information amongst users that comprise the entire collective consciousness. Hence, the attention is not confined to the engagement between user and media event but extends to encompass attention between individual nodes of the network. It is through this mutual awareness and attention to the network that media hype is developed and sustained and in turn it is through the media hype that attention to the media event is recruited and persists. The political attention economy is sustained by this mutual awareness and attention. Furthermore this mutual awareness emanates from a mediated spatial awareness that is wrought by the presence of political entities. Modulation of this space emanates from our attention to and hence interaction with these social and political factors.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Abrahamson  J.B, Arterton F.C, Orren G.R.

1988 The Electronic Commonwealth, Basic Books Inc. New York

Anderson, Benedict.

1983 Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Verso,  New York

Axford, B.

2000 New Media and Politics. Sage Publications Ltd, London

Courldry, Nick.  McCarthy, Anna

2004 Mediaspace : place, scale, and culture in a media age , Routledge, New York

Graunbaum, Adolft                 

1968 Geometry and Chronometry in Philosophical Perspective,  University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

Kaid, Lynda Lee

2008 Changing and Staying the Same: Communication in Campaign 2008, Journalism Studies, Routledge, London

Krasinski, Andrzej. Plebanski, Jerzy

2006 An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology, Cambridge University Press

Levy, Pierre

1988 Collective Intelligence Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Media Age (translated by Robert Bononno), Plenum Trade, New York

Perlmutter, David D.

2008 Blogwars, Oxford University Press inc, New York

Terranova, Tiziana

2004 Network Culture: politics for the information age, Pluto Press, London

I’ve been traveling Maine this week. After celebrating a family reunion in Caribou, and visiting my family’s origins in Van Buren and St Leonard New Brunswick, I arrived back to Lewiston on Sunday evening. Lewiston is my childhood home, and where most of my immediate family still resides.

Yesterday morning I ventured out in search of some coffee and Wi-Fi.  Driving down Main Street I was struck by the number of “For Sale or Lease” signs on homes and businesses.  Lewiston has struggled for years to transcend its original mill town roots, like many small towns and cities in New England. It occurred to me that Lewiston’s biggest problem is now a much more visible national dilemma: How can we replace our lost manufacturing base in order to keep regional economies growing and healthy?

The café I’d hoped could serve up an espresso and Internet fix was no longer at 205 Main Street. A brand new store called “The Dollar Store & Up!” was in the process of taking over the space, with a front window display now featuring miniature Empire State Building, World Trade Center and Lady Liberty figurines. Some of Lewiston’s longest running businesses have specialized in this sort of overstocked and distressed merchandise. Seems deal conscious residents are more likely to spend a buck on a homeless New York City tchotchke than spend $3 on a high-end mocha. Driving around town it’s clear to see that this city is struggling to find it’s footing in this very difficult economy.

Foiled in my attempt to find a comfortable place to work, I decided to take a walk down Lisbon Street, the heart of downtown Lewiston. Once the city’s main shopping district, Lisbon’s eight blocks of early century architecture reflect the city’s one-time ambition to serve as a regional center for commerce and culture. Growing up in Lewiston in the seventies and eighties this particular street was better known for all the things our parents wanted to protect us from… namely drugs, alcohol, crime and “adult” merchandise.

Coming to downtown Lisbon as a child for guitar and art lessons sparked a lasting affinity for urban living and culture. But in those days I wasn’t able to recognize or acknowledge the street’s unique assets. Then Lisbon Street felt like a tattered remnant of  the city’s past. Lewiston and Auburn’s newer shopping malls and neighborhood businesses represented the future of city life.  Our downtown, like many across the country, became an anachronism, and a center for the city’s underbelly.

I left Lewiston in 1984 for Boston, MA and then moved to New York City in ‘95,  residing in Brooklyn and working in Midtown and Lower Manhattan.  I relocated to Portland, Oregon in 2001. Over the years I’ve spent time in many big American cities like D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. These life experiences have given me an appreciation for what makes vibrant cities work. Walking down Lisbon Street the question occurred to me: Do cities and towns, like media, possess attention economy attributes that help fuel their success, or lack thereof?  The largest urban economies like New York and San Francisco are able to cater to many diverse demographics and interests. They have something, in fact, many things, for everybody, and for that they demand a lot of attention.  But smaller cities have a harder time catering to wide spectrums of people or satisfying wide ranges of interests. In order to succeed, smaller markets must become associated and identified with specific areas of richness.

My current hometown of Portland Oregon is adept at cultivating and promoting the special associations that give the city much of its character, history and identity. Portland is known to be a hub for outdoor activities like biking, hiking, running, skiing, windsurfing and climbing. Nike and Columbia Sportswear have helped Portland become a international leader in outdoor and athletic apparel. Portland’s independent spirit has helped it become a national leader in many indie industries and cultures, from coffee roasting, beer brewing and DIY music to chicken keeping and gardening. Portland has been successful promoting itself as an international center for sustainability and green living, as well as a leading hub for computer processors, Open Source Software development and technology Start-ups. Smaller Oregon markets like Bend, Ashland and Cannon Beach have become successful centers for experience, from shopping and dining, to outdoor recreation and the arts.

Some of Maine’s most distinctive coastal communities like Portland, Freeport, Bar Harbor and Boothbay Harbor have become strongly associated with the environmental, historic and commercial assets that make Maine a distinctive place. These smaller cities demonstrate the importance of creating a cultural identity to help grow a sustainable economy. Markets with focused identities create attention, and that attention helps fuel growth.

Lewiston’s rich historic associations served it well in the old days. The city was built on its manufacturing prowess, especially in areas of textiles and footwear, and on its strong Franco-American culture. Today Lewiston is a city struggling to navigate from that past into the future. Perhaps Lewiston’s most important decisions regarding its future identity, culture and economy have yet to be made.

As I applied these attention economy principles to my morning stroll I realized that I was experiencing Lisbon Street for the first time as a person of experience: as a marketer, an urban dweller, a critical observer, a parent, and a concerned former resident. I can now recognize and separate the shell of downtown Lewiston’s hope-filled past from the economy that currently inhabits it.

For example, as a big fan of music and the arts, I’m surprised that I’ve never noticed the beautiful old Music Hall called the Frye Block. It’s just never caught my attention. It’s now a Maine District Court. I’ve since learned that the building was the location of Lewiston’s leading hardware store when downtown still served as the city’s main shopping district. But I still know nothing of its original history or the role it played in the lives of early residents.

Applying my experiences cultivating attention economies online, I asked myself what downtown Lisbon currently stands for as a real-world environment. Who utilizes this marketplace today? What characterizes and distinguishes its value proposition, identity and gravity well? Whose attention does it work to attract?

As I walked down this beautiful historic street, with its exposed cobblestone and early century charm it was clear that just a few of the street’s locations were serving 98% of the pedestrian traffic out and about on this particular morning. Those were, in order of volume: the District Court, Labor Board, the Library’s free sidewalk Wi-Fi, the Pawn Shops and Law Offices. If this traffic represents the market, than this early morning economy was clearly focused on the regions underemployed, undereducated and underprivileged.

This goes to the heart of what any attention economy faces, which is that of perception, identity, experience and relevance. There was little to be found this morning that would cater to or interest the larger populations found strolling through the regions malls and super markets, which explains why most Lewiston residents ignore this downtown environment and why it’s been so difficult for a new mainstream economy to take hold here. The easiest way to measure the value of a marketplace is to image it as a network, remembering that a network’s users and operators help define its character, culture and value.

A downtown economy can cast a light or a shadow on what outsiders believe a community is about, affecting the kind of  attention the community inevitably receives. It was only after I left Lewiston in ‘84 that I learned that outsiders often viewed my childhood home as rough and tumble place.  A scary place.  A place to be avoided.  I knew that Lewiston wasn’t that, and had long wondered where this negative perception and reputation originated. Yet on this very morning I watched as downtown Lisbon St. perpetuated an identity that is counter to that which successful downtown markets, or any successful attention economies, work to create. When the heart of a city fails to attract and serve it’s residents the community reputation and identity can pay a price.

Today, like most cities,  Lewiston and Auburn residents rely heavily on their regional shopping centers for shopping, dining and entertainment. But the suburban attention economies and corporate experiences that superstores, malls and plazas provide are indistinct and homogeneous. They offer uniform, garden variety experiences found in every market across the  country.

What downtown Lisbon Street offers that’s unique and distinctive is a string of early period store fronts and environments that can be refashioned to serve modern needs and deliver uncommon experiences. Today cities can’t afford to build downtown structures like the Gateway at 5-11 Lisbon Street, or the vacated Depositors Trust Building at 55 Lisbon Street, or the long abandoned space at 43 Lisbon Street (pictured above) with its grand open floors and antique tin ceilings. I’ve had many memorable shopping and dining experiences over the years at establishments built into reconditioned spaces just like these, often wishing that my hometown had possessed such distinguished public environments. What a surprise to discover that Lewiston has the distinctive old bones found in much larger markets. But how does a community begin to create a new economy around an undefined, unrealized and neglected downtown district? It can start by recognizing that it possesses the kind of distinguished urban assets that many towns and cities wish they had, and can’t afford to build… and by creating a new economy that leverages and promotes these assets.

Many of Lewiston’s old mills are being refashioned into modern shops, businesses, bars and restaurants. Lewiston’s reinvention from a manufacturing economy to a distinctive modern marketplace is already underway. Lisbon Street’s future identity seems the big challenge ahead. Glimmers of the street’s future richness can be found in the new businesses popping up that are representative of the kind of experience-driven offerings found in larger markets.  A new restaurant called Fuel and an adjacent art gallery exhibit a modern urban sophistication that feels very much in sync with it’s historic surroundings. A new Indian restaurant called Mother India hints that a more diverse, international flavor could eventually take seed.

Whatever the nature of the economy that eventually characterizes this area, Lewiston would be wise to continue to reclaim and protect the street’s valuable urban assets, while working to support the entrepreneurial culture that’s begun to take shape. The easiest way to support a progressive business culture is to enjoy it’s fruits. Residents should make a point of visiting the new environments and offerings that pop up, and supporting the local entrepreneurs and investors who are willing to take personal risks to bring new jobs, opportunities, culture and experiences to the city.

Residents should make a point of visiting downtown Lisbon Street to experience the local character and uncover the city history that abounds. They should engage the new Somalian shop keepers to help their new international transplants become a working part of the street’s community and culture. Most importantly, they should help create or support new businesses, opportunities and experiences that reflect and serve both the current community and the identity that they envision for the future.

Turning an ailing attention economy around is hard work, but worth the effort, as the economy owners will continue to grow and monetize their assets, investments and the attention they create over time. In the case of Lisbon Street, the economy owners are Lewiston resident. What can residents gain by turning this under-appreciated downtown environment into a welcoming, robust and singular experience? A stronger community. A renewed regional reputation. A prouder local identity. In short, all the cultural assets that translate into jobs, tourism, quality-of-life and rising home values.

Discussing and creating a framework for a community vision maybe helpful for creating a marketplace that successfully accommodates and serves the city’s current culture while working to instill an identity that residents, visitors, neighboring communities and transplants alike can connect with. Without community discussions and involvement, the city’s old identity may feel at odds with the new, more cosmopolitan businesses and environments that emerge, and that disconnect can cause investments to fail. Lewiston’s residents should explore what other small to midsized cities have done to reinvent and revitalize their historic downtown assets and environments, as well as understand how such transformations occur, and how they benefit the whole of the community.

An interesting case study for how a well-defined attention economy leads to exponential growth for a small city is Freeport Maine. Here is a bit of important Freeport history…

L.L.Bean was founded by an avid hunter and fisherman who developed a waterproof boot and set up a shop in his brother’s basement in Freeport, Maine. By 1912  he was selling the “Bean Boot,” or Maine Hunting Shoe, through a four-page mail-order catalog, and the boot remains a staple of the company’s outdoor image. –excerpt from Wikipedia

Freeport is an example of how a single innovative entrepreneur gave a small town a distinctive commercial identity. Today Freeport’s economy sustains over 200 upscale outlets and shops, making this small community one of Maine’s leading tourist destinations. Freeport has succeeded by pulling a singular “attention economy” up by its Bean bootstraps. Imagining what Freeport would look like today if Leon Leonwood Bean hadn’t set up shop is equal to trying to image what Lewiston’s downtown would look like if Benjamin E Bates hadn’t built his mill on the banks of the Androscoggin River back in 1850.

Every marketplace can be considered an economy of attention. The attention you create is the attention you grow on. The success of small cities depends on how well they define, cultivate, protect and promote the community’s distinct assets. Through the principles of attention economics a city can build and market a focused identity that residents, visitors, business owners, entrepreneurs, investors and neighboring communities can connect with, participate in, and leverage. Lewiston has an opportunity to turn local and regional attention into a valuable new currency by focusing its own attention on reviving this singular urban district.