Attention is the new money

Think about it: information became infinite and basically free, but human attention stayed brutally finite - you get maybe 16 usable hours a day, and that's it. Whenever something is scarce and everything else is abundant, the scarce thing becomes the currency. Herbert Simon called this back in 1971: "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." He saw it before the internet even existed. 🤯.

Media, politics, markets. Obviously.

But the deepest level is: your attention is your life. What you pay attention to for years literally becomes your biography. In that sense the platforms aren't stealing your time - they're strip-mining your identity, hour by hour, and selling the ore to advertisers.

The dark twist: money can be earned back, attention can't. Every hour is spent exactly once, no refunds. So arguably attention is more valuable than money, yet we guard our wallets and leave our focus unlocked with the door wide open.

And the scariest part is the victims defend the thieves. "It's just how I relax!" 😅 Stockholm syndrome with an infinite scroll.