They Don't Need You Happy

Examining the state of the attention economy.

It may be edifying to consider our economy as an economy of attention; and then to consider money as a form of attention within that structure. When I say “attention,” I mean it like “attending to a need;” if you “pay attention” to something, you are giving it whatever is needed to improve its state of being. (If the brakes on your car “need attention,” that means someone has to “pay attention” to them—which could, from the driver’s perspective, mean taking time out to see a mechanic, to trade money (attention tokens) for another person’s time (attention) to go toward recognizing and solving the problem with the breaks.)

If you “need attention,” it means you have a problem. Sometimes the problem is that your own mind and body are uncomfortable and you need to know if there’s something someone else can do to make them run more smoothly. That doesn’t have to mean direct contact—it can be as indirect as feeling bored and putting on a TV show that you think will give you something better to think about for a while than whatever is going on in your life at the moment.