The Attention Economy and the Net (1997)

firstmonday.org

73 points·jpelecanos··6 comments

A surprising amount of phenomena in today's world can be explained around this theory. Every prediction in the "Further Expectations" section has in a way come to pass. As far as his prediction that money becomes "less important" it's possible that within a century VR will recreate a number of the experiences you would need material wealth to obtain today. A trend has already begun with younger generations giving preference to virtual experiences. It's still hard to tell if that's a world I'd want to live in.

Previous thread from the time of posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119295

This article is good on the future, not so good on the past. The characterization of the transition from feudalism to a market economy as being led by North America seems highly suspect. It seems to me that the New World colonies that came from countries with thriving market economies (such as Britain) developed thriving market economies. The colonies from countries with more feudalistic economies (e.g. Spain) developed more feudalistic economies.

The British (by coming later) learned from the mistakes of the Spanish (who came first).

I think it was more just a matter of replicating their home country economic model in the New World, and being part of developments towards a market economy that were happening around the world, predominantly in the British sphere of influence.

I learned that the abundance of gold and silver in Latin America prevented any kind of market-based economy evolving around here as colonies. Just slave everyone and make people extract the value from earth. Then came other natural resources with similar approach as sugar cane and coffee.

North America had none of it, so the only way it could provide value to the empire was through commerce and a market-based economy.

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