04 March 2021

The Price of Attention as We Reach the End of the Information Economy

Among the many signs that the information economy is reaching its limit? The price we pay to those able to focus in the midst of its distractions.

A couple of years ago I was talking to the principal of a school in King County, where Microsoft and Amazon are headquartered. I asked her, “What is it about that area that in the decades around 2000 it would produce two men who are the world’s wealthiest?”

She ended up telling me about how much trouble they have with children with some variant of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). So many of the programmers who are so productive come to Seattle to work, meet each other and marry. Their kids are sometimes even deeper into the issues brought on by ASD. Given how differently they process information and notice signals around them, some will experience a distressing social life.

I’m a big fan of flow, the psychology of engagement. When you are in flow, you are absorbed by a task and not only are you at your most productive and creative but are happy.

One of the big obstacles to creating flow is the steady flow of information, of distractions. Information consumption in households in 2020 was 38X higher than it was in 2010 - the average monthly consumption hitting 344 gigabytes per month by 2020. Some of this is because we’re consuming videos that push so much more data into our homes than text ever does. Some of this, though, gets to an odd truth: we have multiple tabs opened to multiple things. Now someone watches a video while texting with a couple of friends and playing an online game. To consume this much information, we multitask.


  
Attention spans have shortened to allow us to consume all these various sources of information. The new, online human brain has an attention span about the same as a goldfish. Seriously. Measured by how long we stay focused on one thing, our attention spans have dropped to 8 seconds. 8. With so much information streaming in, we cannot afford to stay focused for long on any one thing. To get lost in any one thing is to miss out on all the other things.

They call it an information age for good reason. We live in a sea of information.

So, what does this have to do with the folks Amazon and Microsoft are hiring to create the software that drives work and commerce? As it turns out, some forms of ASD – being on the spectrum – are a gift in a world flooded with distractions. Some folks with ASD are capable of becoming hyper-focused. One way that is described is as if one were in flow – but for hours. All other priorities and distractions dissolve. To be this focused with the tools of the information age makes one incredibly productive.

How productive?

This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released one of their regular reports on income. They track weekly wages but of course simply multiplying that number by 52 suggests a good approximation of what Americans earn annually. In the third quarter of 2020, the average pay for American workers was about $61,000. In Silicon Valley, New York, and King County average pay was about double that. But BLS breaks down the sectors. In King County, information workers’ average pay was $327,000. Average. This for a group of 130,000 people. $327,000 is great salary for anyone; it’s kind of a stunning to think of a group this large averaging that much.

How much does it pay to be able to focus in the midst of an information economy seemingly doing its best to distract us? Pretty good money, as it turns out. And think about this. Gates and Bezos can pay wages this high and still accumulate hundreds of billions in wealth. You could argue that even at a third of a million a year in salary, these information workers are not paid enough.

Markets reward what is scarce. What is scarce in this information economy pumping 344 gigabytes a month into our homes? Attention.

Pay attention? It turns out that we pay a lot for it.

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