The #attentioneconomy is a unified model of social organization. In the previous post, I described some very general features of the attention economy, and hinted at your role in it. In this post, I will describe a simple thought experiment for thinking about how the attention economy might serve as a general organizational infrastructure. Imagine that everyone straps a little box on their foreheads. These little boxes produce tiny invisible marbles at some rate, say: 10 marbles every second. While you are wearing the box, it shoots invisible marbles out at the objects you happen to be looking at. Those objects along with everything else in the environment are equipped with little devices that register and absorb the incoming marbles, so that all your marbles get absorbed by something. These marbles are a crude approximation of the attention you pay. Every time you pay attention to some object, it gets bombarded with the marbles shooting from your forehead. The idea seems silly because it is. I’d never suggest we actually fling high speed projectiles in arbitrary directions from boxes mounted on people’s foreheads, that would be dangerous and irresponsible. If this is to be implemented at all, it would of course be rendered digitally and transparently as best as our technology will allow. Moreover, the direction a person’s head is facing is a terrible indicator of where their attention is being paid; to do this precisely, we’d need something far more sophisticated. But leave these technical details aside for the moment. This is a toy model, and I’m describing it in some detail to help us think about what the attention economy is doing, and what we are doing in it. So boxes on foreheads with marbles shooting out with some frequency and getting absorbed by other objects. Still with […]

#AttentionEconomy is something of a buzzword among startups in the social media business, but the idea of “managing attention” has a long history as a design philosophy and marketing strategy. The idea has also found some use in the cognitive sciences. The term itself traces to Herbert Simon, a computer scientist and one of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence. I plan to discuss all these uses of the term “Attention Economy” in future posts, especially Simon’s work (which I know best). But for now, I’ll be talking about the Attention Economy as a way of modeling attention behavior in a complex, organized system of attenders. This is technical, and it will take a long and careful analysis to parse what this means in clear and precise ways. We’ll need to do some math. However, this approach is in line with work being done across many disciplines, in both the physical and social sciences, in the study of #complexity and #complexsystems If you feel comfortable with the idea (and mathematics) of complexity, you might want to just skip ahead to the good bits and read this article, which was just published in Nature: https://plus.google.com/u/0/117828903900236363024/posts/484P2wKMjei I was not involved with this research, but everything I hope to say will be of a piece with the science and methodology presented there. In a future post I will go through this article in detail. However, the paper is difficult and we need to know why we are doing it. In the next post I want to motivate the approach by giving you a simple, intuitive model for thinking about your role in the Attention Economy. Understanding how the model works will be an important tool for understanding the discussion that will follow. In this post, however, I want to lay down the basic picture […]

Today begins a series where I clarify and explain the +Attention Economy There is much confusion and uncertainty over what an Attention Economy is, how it works, and what it means for our present and our future. I have some answers to these questions, but they are just rough stones; I hope together we might polish them into something far more valuable. I cannot do this work alone. Over the course of these posts I will try to lay out both the theoretical and scientific justifications for the view. I will also talk about issues of implementation, engineering, and design for an Attention Economy, as well as its implications for politics, governance, and the sustainability of the human population. These are among the most important topics of our time, and I know my communities are filled with incredibly bright people tackling these issues from humblingly diverse and creative perspectives, at times with inspiring success. My ideas here are meant as contributions to this shared project; I hope the view will tie together some of the disjointed threads that might otherwise fray loose. Although I do have some academic goals for this work, I have no special interest, financial or otherwise, in writing these posts. My interest in the topics, and the urgency and earnestness with which I write these words, is entirely a product of being alive in the year 2012. Enough preliminaries, there’s work to do. If you appreciate this work, please participate. Original Post: https://plus.google.com/u/0/117828903900236363024/posts/HzYnTDErEhf

A forum I use has a thread titled “Kony: What is going on here?” There is some discussion of the issue, and the predictable skepticism and cynicism. But most posts are just people baffled at how quickly this thing sprouted up out of the blue. One user said “I got a video about Kony in a mailing list for a Melbourne nightclub. This is getting absurd.” I know what is going on. Here is what is going on. A group of people who are very passionate about one very specific issue in a very distant part of the world have used the manipulative magic of media to draw attention to their issue. That issue itself provokes immediate moral outrage, but any serious attempt to address the issues runs you almost immediately into the same miserable and disgusting human quagmire that afflicts every corner of this festering planet. The only available suggestion for a solution, the only solution left these days, is “send money”. There is no reason to trust that sending money in this situation will do any good whatsoever. At the same time, and entirely coincidentally, there is a huge population of highly interconnected chatty westerners who have over the past few months convinced themselves that they, collectively, have the ability to foster real and significant change. Collectively, they have no particular hobby horses to guide them to particular causes; indeed, much liquid crystal has been displayed concerning the lack of “focus” that prevents the collective from establishing a stable social role. Nevertheless, the collective recognizes the power it has to affect change– real, significant, global, humanitarian change– and so they are, collectively, hungry for opportunities to exercise that power. They want a cause to rally around. In this case, and again entirely coincidentally, the media manipulation was successful […]

1. Participation: Everyone is encouraged to contribute. 2. Inclusivity: By everyone, we mean everyone. 3. Open Access: Everyone’s contributions are shared with everyone. 4. Collaboration: Everyone is free to use everyone else’s contributions. 5. Self-Organization: Everyone has a say in how those contributions get organized. edit: 6. Perpetual beta: Everything is open to revision. Any others? #digitalvalues Original post: https://plus.google.com/u/0/117828903900236363024/posts/TXUwt32fWU8

You and I are two young, educated Europeans in the late 17th century, right at the dawn of the Enlightenment. We are up to date on some of the new philosophy, where talk of “individual freedom” and “human rights” has dominated the intellectual discussion of what an ideal society looks like. We have also witnessed the new sciences start to develop, only to be routinely hampered by the oppressive power of the Church. We feel like we are on the brink of major social revolution, a fundamental revaluation of human life and society, but the power of the Church and of the Kings and Lords is incredibly strong, and the future is uncertain. One day, I come to you in hushed tones. “I fear that we may never realize the ideals of our Enlightenment,” I say, “because I do not believe such an ideal society is possible under the oppressive rule of the Church. The Church will never recognize a conception of human freedom that challenges their absolute authority.” “Nonsense!” you reply. “The ideal of human rights and a liberal society is a noble goal, and one worth pursuing for the good of all people. But the Church is a fact of life, and it has been this way for generations, back to Constantine himself. However we choose to realize the ideal state, we must do it while acknowledging the power and authority of the Church. Only by cooperating with the Church and its wishes will we be able to advance our cause. That’s how it has always been, that’s how it always will be.” I object again, suggesting that individual liberty cannot be realized within a theocratic state. “In order to realize a genuinely liberal society, we must have asecular society! The road to human rights requires bringing down […]

When an ant is placed in a foreign environment without a trail to lead it home, it will wander aimlessly (probably the best method for stumbling onto the lost trail). When it encounters another ant from the same colony, it follows (maybe that ant knows the way back!) When the entire colony is massively displaced and loses its trail, it swarms around itself like a spiral galaxy, since all the ants revert to the best-guess default behavior of “following another ant”, and none of them have any idea where to go. Unless disrupted, the ants will continue to spiral around themselves until they all die from exhaustion. #antmill #ants #selforganization Original post:https://plus.google.com/u/0/117828903900236363024/posts/dy13nz8r6H9

“So how exactly will the mining of asteroids change the way we think about natural resources? Well, the engineering and economic challenges are formidable, of course, but the engineering challenges for terrestrial mining are no joke either. Everyone got a nice long look at the incredible engineering feats responsible for both building and then repairing the Deepwater Horizon mining operation. Okay, space mining might be more challenging in the details (bigger profits, vastly more epic failures), but is this really “changing the way we think about natural resources”? Or is it more of the same at a more dramatic scale? For that matter, how do we think about natural resources now?” Are asteroids a “natural resource”? There’s been lots of recent discussion about mining space asteroids, and everyone is in a tizzy about how awesome it is to be alive in such exciting times. Criticisms over the proposal are largely…

“For example, colonial entrepreneurs centuries ago formed the forerunners of today’s corporations. These were private entities chartered to do things that the government wanted to do anyway. You could argue there are parallels to exploring space. The aerospace industry isn’t exactly a free market, after all.” “You could also point to Spain and Portugal going to the Vatican, the United Nations of its day, to split up the Americas in a 1494 treaty, and compare that to today’s debates about space treaties.” Winchell Chung originally shared this post: Mr. Mann draws some interesting parallels between Planetary Resources and Columbus in 1492. Science fiction authors take note. Ask an Expert: 1492’s lessons for asteroid miners Asteroid miners beware? We ask Charles Mann, author of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, to discuss lessons from the past.

h/t +Rebecca Spizzirri Sakis Koukouvis originally shared this post: Global warming: New research blames economic growth It’s a message no one wants to hear: to slow down global warming, we’ll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world’s economies work. Global warming: New research blames economic growth | Science News It’s a message no one wants to hear: to slow down global warming, we’ll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world’s economies work.

Do Kids Care If Their Robot Friend Gets Stuffed Into a Closet? More from the Robovie research group! “Overall, 80 percent of the participants felt that Robovie was intelligent, and 60 percent thought that Robovie had feelings. At the same time, over 80 percent believed that it was just fine for people to own and sell Robovie. Hmm. Only 50 percent of the children felt that it was not all right to put Robovie in the closet, although close to 90 percent agreed with Robovie that it wasn’t fair to put it in the closet and it should have been allowed to at least finish the game it was playing. Things get even more interesting when you break down the results by age. For example, while 93 percent and 67 percent of 9 year olds said that they believed Robovie to be intelligent and to have feelings, respectively, those percentages drop to 70 percent and just 43 percent when you ask 15 year olds the same thing. Older children were also much less likely to think of Robovie as a friend, but more likely to object to a person being able to sell Robovie.” From the published article: “What then are these robots? One answer, though highly speculative, is that we are creating a new ontological being with its own unique properties. Recall, for example, that we had asked children whether they thought Robovie was a living being. Results showed that 38% of the children were unwilling to commit to either category and talked in various ways of Robovie being “in between” living and not living or simply not fitting either category. As one child said, “He’s like, he’s half living, half not.” It is as if we showed you an orange object and asked you, “Is this object red […]

“In one simple task, a plate of food was presented to the wolf pups (at 9 weeks) or to the dog puppies (both at 5 weeks and at 9 weeks). However, the food was inaccessible to the animals; human help would be required to access it. The trick to getting the food was simple: all the animals had to do was make eye contact with the experimenter, and he or she would reward the dog with the food from the plate. Initially, all the animals attempted in vain to reach the food. However, by the second minute of testing, dogs began to look towards the humans. This increased over time and by the fourth minute there was a statistical difference. Dogs were more likely to initiate eye contact with the human experimenter than the wolves were. This is no small feat; initiating eye contact with the experimenter requires that the animal refocus its attention from the food to the human. Not only did the wolf pups not spontaneously initiate eye contact with the human experimenter, but they also failed to learn that eye contact was the key to solving their problem.” Bora Zivkovic originally shared this post: Dogs, But Not Wolves, Use Humans As Tools | The Thoughtful Animal, Scientific American Blog Network Sometime between fifteen and thirty thousand years ago, probably in the Middle East, the long, protracted process of domestication began to alter the genetic code of … POST NAVIGATION