Attention is the new oil — and it is being pumped out of you

If you are not paying for the product, the product is you. More precisely, your attention. Whole industries have learned to turn the seconds of your life into money, and that is why they fight for them so fiercely. The phone in your hand is not just a window onto the world; it is also a pipe through which your most valuable resource is pumped out.

The scarcity is not of information but of attention

Once, knowledge was rare, and the one who had it was prized. Today information is endless — but a person has as much attention as they did a thousand years ago: a few waking hours a day. An abundance of information creates a scarcity of attention, and in that scarcity lies the whole essence of the new economy. A war is being fought over your eyes and minutes — one you usually lose without even noticing you are in it.

Who pays if the app is free

A free app is not a gift but a deal whose terms you never read. It is designed to hold you as long as possible: an endless feed, pop-up notifications, a faint anxiety when you have not looked in a while. This is neither an accident nor your weakness — it is the work of hundreds of engineers hired to defeat your willpower. To admit this is not a defeat but the first step to no longer being the product.

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
— Herbert Simon

My opinion: attention is, in essence, your life itself: what you look at is what you become. To give it away freely and uncontrolled is like leaving your wallet open in a crowd. Reclaim the right to decide where to look. Turn off the needless notifications, put the phone face down, give your best hours not to an app but to a person or a purpose. Whoever owns their attention owns their life; whoever has given it away lives by someone else’s script.

Cover: photograph (Unsplash, CC0), duotone by Shanraq.