Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net

Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/519/440


Quote for thought: "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 teaches, or what rubrics such as "the information age" suggests. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions- stars vs. fans- and its own form or property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to this who best accommodate to this new reality". 
Quote for thought: "If I leave the room after this talk, I would be extremely unlikely to be able to recognize a particular one of you three months from now, though you might be able to recognize me".


Personal question: Are there articles you have read that take the standpoint of a information economy to which we are moving?

Do you agree with this statement? "When you say 'how are you?' for instance, you don't really want to know, as a fule, but if whomever you're talking with chooses to say how he or she is, it is more to get attention from you than to convey information'.
                   As a side note, I completely agree with this statement 

Do you feel as if the author's bridge from his explanations to why he believes we are working towards an attention-based economy is legitimate?

Is paying attention to yourself, via gardening or obtaining resources in any other fashion, a form of illusory (based on illusion) attention? Is this justified enough that the author should include this in examples leading us towards the notion we are moving towards an attention economy?

"Obtaining attention is obtaining a kind of enduring wealth, a form of wealth that puts you in a preferred position to get anything this new economy offers". Some people do not desire attention, and would rather stay to themselves. With that, are those individuals in this new economic system going to be worthless and have not value associated to them?

The Net & The Web by Hakim Bey

TAZ: Temporary Autonomous Zone

Quote for thought: "So the net has a horizontal or non-hierarchal aspect as well", "The TAZ has a temporary but actual location in time and a temporary but actual location in space"

"The present form of the unofficial web are still... rather primitive". As the 'web' constitutes a large part of our lives, as it matures, what does this mean for our use of the 'web' and for our lives all together?

"The web can provide a kind of substitute for some of this duration and locale--it can inform the TAZ, from its inception, with cast amounts of compacted time and space which have been "subtilized" as data". [If I interoperated this correctly] What does this mean for actual time and space in the future? Will humans be able to experience a location in a different time without actually being there (virtual reality)? -> do you think humans will venture into this type of technology eventually (such as Tron) as the author suggests?

Would you describe yourself as a (1) Fifth estate/Neo-Paleolithic individual who is against the Net, or (2) the Cyberpunk utopianists who see the NEt as a step forward in evolution? Why?

Is the 'Net' as chaotic and crazy as the author suggests? Based on the passage (If you can remember), what elements of the 'Net' being this chaotic (or becoming this chaotic system)  system did you not agree with?

It seems as if (from my interoperation) that the author gives the TAZ a personality. Do you think the TAZ is more of a individual with humanoid characteristics (as it seems from the passage), or something with completely arbitrary characteristics, if any at all?