Essential Reading
Dive deep into the research, insights, and perspectives that shape our understanding of the attention economy.
Dive deep into the research, insights, and perspectives that shape our understanding of the attention economy.

by Michael H. Goldhaber
If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics would suggest.

by Tim Wu
How did the media and advertising industries evolve to constantly compete for our attention? This comprehensive look at attention capture explores the history and ethics of the attention economy.

by Vaswani et al.
While this paper introduces the transformer architecture for AI, its title captures a fundamental truth: attention mechanisms—both human and artificial—are the cornerstone of information processing in the digital age.

by Tristan Harris
A former Google design ethicist reveals how tech companies engineer apps to capture and hold our attention, often at the expense of our wellbeing and autonomy.

by Shoshana Zuboff
An analysis of how tech giants commodify personal experience and behavioral data, transforming attention into a tradeable asset within a new form of capitalism.

by Cal Newport
Newport argues that the ability to focus without distraction is becoming increasingly valuable and rare. In an economy where attention is currency, deep work is the key to thriving.