Push and Pull in “The Attention Economy”
Mikel Breitenstein, Ph.D
Paper for the SIG-Classification Research Workshop
American Society for Information Science and Technology
October 20, 2007, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Pull technologies expect users to go to the source, often a static source such as a library catalog, to get the information they need. Push technologies deliver to users some individualized information, usually, that the user might want. Marketers and information-delivery services – the user may or may not have chosen to enroll -- have profiles that target some users to match with some information. The Attention Economy, a model that occurred about the same time as Push/Pull models, holds that attention to quickly shifting forces in affluent society is a commodity that is really more powerful than information control. User-generated information competes with standard sources and makes information-creators out of information-users in new ways. A number of questions are vital in the dilemma of how traditional library goalsand resources, and the work of library professionals, can be merged with ad hoc and user-based information and new delivery structures and technologies.
Introduction to Push and Pull Technologies
“Push” and “Pull” models of information delivery – so named – seem to emergein the late 1990s in the literature of information and technology.
Pull describes technologies that force the user to go to the source – it pulls them to the card catalog, store, office, magazine, website… to get what is there(Salz 2006, 43). Pull assumes the users know where to find things, assumes that the sources stay stable, and assumes that users or customers can be satisfied with generic resources made for a broad population. Pull is the model that defined libraries and information services of the past centuries. Once a user goes to a pull source, push techniques maybe present.
Push technology delivers information right to the users, before or just when they want it, the product the vendor or creator has to sell or promote, as the user wants it. This paradigm is based on technologies that can incorporate individual understanding of needs, preferences, and timings (Salz 2006, 43). Generic content for the good of all is the premise of pull; personalized content and/or content delivery for the individual is the premise of push in the newest versions. But some define TV ads, mailed catalogs, and other older unsolicited information in the mainstream as push style.
Introduction to The Attention Economy
“What counts most now is what is most scarce now, namely attention.” (Goldhaber, 1997a, 1).
The “Attention Economy” is not closely defined; rather it is a model for discussing the immediacy-dynamics of current communications between a person and the media, and between persons. It is a way to look at the dynamics of information and consumer power. The Attention Economy, in a society in which many needs are met and we compete for the attention of others to meet our non-survival agendas, is a model that addresses communications and influence in such a society
Think of these pairings of attention with other commodities: attention and celebrity, attention and web page advertisements, attention and email, attention and politics, attention and friendship, attention and family, attention and TV… What do all these have in common? a brief and unwelcome, or perhaps lengthy and engaging, capture of your mental processes to lead you toward a goal –paying attention to someone’s intentions.
Do I have your attention now? Yes, to a degree, and just for the moment.
You may not have heard the term, Attention Economy, but you are familiar with the power of communications technologies and the powerful links betweens the purveyors of information (for your attention) and the receivers (who give attention in milli-seconds, minutes, or hours).These links are multi-directional, and so the attention model recognizes that it takes two in a moment to send and receive, or push and pull, to engage in some kind of successful information exchange.
Conditions of Our Attention Economy
What does it take to have an economy based on attention? Mainly, wealth. Societies struggling with unrest or disaster or serious want of basic life-preserving resources do not have time or effort to devote to the luxury of attention-spending, except in the pursuit of survival.
But in societies where wealth and well-being are enjoyed by many, something other than money is bound to emerge. Money is limitless – we might all find a way to get more and more, and we can save it. Moreover, it is impersonal. By contrast, prominence – the state of being a major holder of attention – is a new measure of the elite, and the multiple media available now are essential to the development of prominence (Franck, 1999). Prominence is a commodity harder to get and to hold onto than money. Prominence is owned by just a few, and not usually forever.
Those who are prominent care who give them attention, because the value is derived partly from the esteem accorded to the giver of attention by the prominent receiver. Any attention might be better than none at all, but some attention sources are better than others. The old Hollywood adage may be true: it doesn’t matter what they say about you as long as they are saying something. Attention is value-laden for the giver and the receiver.To further complicate the tracking of attention powers, we have to recognize that attention to oneself competes with the demands of others for our attention. Attention is a constant and shifting force. The average person pulls information, pushes opinions and requests, and wants individualized service.
Emergence of an Attention Economy
The development of an Attention Economycoincided with the rise of the mass media in all forms, mid-late in the 20th century. The appearance of the term is coincident with the use of the terms push/pull. In the US, the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 is generally heralded as the first time that the populace watched and experienced news visuals as live events that lasted for an extended period of time. All attention was riveted to the coverage ofthe terrible event, and the following days of ceremonies were broadcast live while businesses and schools shut down so that everyone with access to a TV could not only hear but see the experiences at the same time. Political and social perceptions were changed when large parts of the population shared in a synchronous way a huge information event. Later events that have been cited as breakthroughs are the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997, the OJ car chase in 1994, the WorldTradeCenter attacks in 2001. These events are not equally grave, but all brought much focus on the event, with a huge number of people stopping their activities and watching the same thing at the same time.
Younger readers might say… “so what, of course these events would be shown on TV,” not having experienced a time when immediate live news broadcasts for hours were something special or non-existence. But readers over age 50 will recall that before the compelling event that converged history and technology,the radio and the newspaper – not live visuals –were the main forms of citizen information.Live TV broadcasts of car chases and weddings and funerals and awards ceremonies were not standard. The power to grab attention in a big way began not with the explosion ofthe internet but with the earlier established wide-scale immediacy of visual broadcast media. Nothing grabs one’s attention, on a compelling level, like an image.
The news media increasingly have been able to be on-the-spot for hours on end to give us the details as they develop. However, the power of individuals to make attention for themselves, perhaps the marker of the mature Attention Economy, is the internet phenomenon where everyone can produce publicity about himself or someone else.
The topics of fame-attention have changed. Personal factors, such as relationships, dress, and diet are now in the mainstream of interest, at least in the US. The war in Iraq, poverty, hunger, homelessness – because they are not new today, this very day – do not command as much immediate attention on a given day as a movie-star arrest, the weather, the stock market. The Anna Nicole Smith saga showed us how celebrity and sensation combine to be attention-worthy. OJ Simpson, as I write, is in the news again.
So, attention in this new economy is not built on social justice, political systems, or other long-term motives. Attention-worthiness in the Attention Economy seems to be defined as whatever distracts you from whatever else you were thinking about a few minutes or seconds before the newer thing came along. It really is a brain-centered response to stimulation -- at least in its fundamental form. The speed and dispersion of communication lets everyone be on the edge of attention-giving or attention-grabbing almost all the time.
Attention versus Information
The emergence of the “Attention Economy” terminology did coincide somewhat with the early emergence of the internet, and with the push-pull models. Discussion of it has been thriving in the circles of early-adopters of internet technologies and early-analysts of the effects of digital technologies on society. In the 1990s, Michael Goldhaber, a theoretical physicist, became prominent as a writer about the Attention Economy, and he may have coined the term. He’d been thinking about it a long time, he has said, since the mid-1980s, when he had a kind of “thunderbolt” realization about attention, not information, being the basis of the new systems of society and economy (Goldhaber, 1997a, 20). His view is that economics now have moved far beyond the workers-owners-products model, and into something that is more about relationships, and virtual and mental commodities, in other words, “attention.”
Goldhaber’s work on the Attention Economy disputes the conventional view that we live in an “information economy.” In an article in “Wired” magazine a decade ago (1997b), he explained quite clearly why attention and information differ, paraphrased here:
•Information is not a scarce commodity. If anything, we are drowning in it, in all forms. Attention is always scarce, because each person has just so much attention to give, wholly or partly at a given moment.
•Information is measurable. We can count words, or bytes, or rates of exchange. Generally,attention is very amorphous and floating and hard to quantify.[Author’s note: Here I would clarify the simplest view of this contrast – information, defined as facts and bytes, mere data, can indeed be measured. However, knowledge, sometimes defined as information applied to some useful and meaningful purpose, or information in context, does indeed have an unmeasurable component of value, as attention does. And, attention in terms of brain activity can also be measured, but only in laboratory experiments.]
•Information is neutral, attention is value-laden. Information comes in forms such as this: the temperature is 90 degrees Fahrenheit; the girl is wearing a red dress; the meal is steak and green salad. Attention is “it is very hot today”; “look at that girl in the red dress – she looks hot…”; and “we had a wonderful meal of a perfectly grilled steak and a really nice crisp salad of greens with a light oil and lemon dressing.”
•Information can flow out forever. Attention needs feedback. It goes both ways. The model of action-reaction that is the basis of attention requires some kind of reception/acknowledgement activity that lets the sender know that the receiver has paid attention. The value of attention, immeasurable in itself, needs breadth or depth of reaction in order to be assessed. Attention requires a stars-and-fans system. It is not a solitary commodity.
Here are recent new laws of attention put forward by Goldhaber (2007a, 1):
• There is a limited amount of attention, and most of us want more than we get.
• In order to get attention, one needs to do or express something.
•The more attention we get rather than give, the more attention-productive we are; more attention = more influence.
• The more attention you get in the past and present, the more attention you can get in the future; attention wealth builds up in the minds of consumers.
•Having the attention of others means you can rely on some satisfaction of your desires.
Stars and Fans
A stars-and-fans system -- perhaps this is what Andy Warhol referred to when he talked about 15 minutes of fame for each of us -- is apparent in the Attention Economy, and the related networks. Fans can talk to one another, and super-fans can achieve a kind of stardom in their own expertise or closeness to the original object of attention. For instance, a fan of Britney Spears who posts a video about her may for a brief time become a “star,” even if the stardom is mostly one of ridicule. Attention has been gained and held for a time, however brief. The value of the content is not the main issue.
But letting attention-grabbers hold major currency might not be what we really want as a world model.Readers will see the prescience of Goldhaber’s remarks in his early warnings (1997b, 5):
• There is a danger in the inequality of the fans and stars;
• There is the possibility that increasing demands for our attention will diminish the ability to reflect and think deeply, or even to enjoy leisure; and
•The desire to engage others’ attention may lead to shortchanging of the needs of others.
Goldhaber noted in 1997that children may be vulnerable, butthere are many more aspects of social need that do not command attention, although attention might be needed. Goldhaber’s predictions (5) have been coming true:
• As attention becomes more important, so will cyberspace;
• “Stardom” will increase with attention economics;
• Anonymity will loose power and larger organizations will have trouble maintaining attention, because of their size; governments will lose some power for the same reason;
• Everyone will have a personal website. This last prediction would have seemed bold in 1997; now we know it is on the way to becoming true.
And Now For Variations on the Theme:
Intention, Attraction, Partial-Attention, Illusion
The Attention Economy has been percolating among future-thinkers and the original ideas have spawned next-generations of the same idea about attention and other models that are not monetary. There are excellent books about the Attention Economy (see Lanham, 2006; Davenport and Beck, 2001) but the majority of variations on the central theme are in the blogosphere, and in conference commentaries.
Intention, says Doc Searls (Searls, 2006, 1), is the real point. It is not attention (which we know can arise for any purpose) that matters, but rather intention, and everyone’s intention is to consume that which is desirable and scarce. “The Intention Economy is about buyers finding sellers, not sellers finding (or “capturing”) buyers.” (Searls, 2006, 2) Conversations, reputations, and interactions matter. This is a step toward a new view, where the individual consumer is surrounded by sellers that have something of value. The buyer wants the seller’s attention. The attention of the seller is sought (pulled), with intention.
Attraction is another model for the relationship between observer and observed. Kevin Roberts (2006, 1) also, like Searls, thinks that the consumer is now driving the “marketplace” of whatever it is that is for sale. His ten ideas for shaping the Attraction Economy deserve more discussion than will be just listed here:
1) emotion is at the heart of the future;
2) story tellersare our new heroes;
3) SISIMO – sight, sound, motion – control what we see on screens and the game-
like nature of what they can do is coming more to the fore;
4) the compelling nature of mystery is combining with sensuality and intimacy;
5) GPS -- Global Positioning Systems -- will become the virtual guide for most of
us;
6) the demanding younger work force will not conform to established values, and
they will make demands on employers to prove their worth;
7) art in all markets will gain value;
8) stores will increasingly be pleasure places;
9) DIY -- Do It Yourself -- consumers will cut and paste their demands and grab
provider attention; and
10) being “on the edge” is now possible for everyone and nearly every part of the
world. Consumers act, not merelyview. There is articulated here aclearly
stated move from passivity to activism on the part of the consumer. The
consumer pushes on the producer his individual wishes; the producer is pulled
to adapt and adopt what will sell or gain attention.
Continuous partial attention is a variation of the model that most readers can relate to, articulated by Linda Stone(Stone, 2006). There is too much information, and most of us are in a state of multitasking with numerous inputs: constantly scanning and filtering in the attempt to get what is worthwhile for us. Turning noisy information into refined knowledge is what many of us do all day long, and maybe in the background of our real work. Stone’s theory is that after at least a couple of decades (1965-1985) of self-expression and self-improvement – activities that do not build community – there was a shift around 1985 (about the time Goldhaber saw the Attention Economy emerging) to a longing for more community, an era of connecting. Personal communication technologies flourished. Prior circumstances and desire, converged with technology once again and created major change in society. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere communications keep most of us connected most of the time now. According to Stone, email is an attention “chipper-shredder” and “connect, connect, connect has brought us to a place where we feel overwhelmed, over-stimulated and unfulfilled.” (Stone, 2006, 3) We are exhausted from paying too much attention.