Finite eyeballs
There's an irony living the back of my brain these days.
While we have these tools that can make almost an INFINITE amount of stuff — products, services, images, words, content, content, content, content ....
We (of flesh and bone) have a very FINITE pair of eyeballs, hours in the day and mental capacity to absorb it all.
That tension means a couple of things :
- Our already-hyper-scattered attention is going to be totally obliterated in the next couple of years (even more so than the last couple). So we must actively protect it. Train it, rest it, shut it off, and care for it like a small fragile pet.
- While we're still the ones deciding where our money goes, the job for those wanting some of it is going to be how to stand out amid the cacophony. And it would be nice if that was more about being respectfully QUIET, than being obnoxiously LOUD. Scarcity, over ubiquity etc.
Perhaps the attention economy is going to have to evolve toward safe-guarding our attention, rather than ambushing it.
A bit hopeful perhaps, but I can't see how much further the noise can grow...