The 5 Futures of Attention
At the end of last December I thought this year would bring some serious innovation with “Attention” online. It hasn’t happened. Not yet, anyway.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on APML but I do know that it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere significant as it stands. I’m not sure people know what to do with it, though I think that something like it could unlock a huge change online. Attention is a very big deal–ask any media company. It also has the opportunity to make us much more productive.
How it would work: Your attention would be recorded
I started thinking of Attention a bit like “Theme Clouds.” Whereas tag clouds are words I manually use to bookmark content, a Theme Cloud would be very different.
- They would be automatic. I wouldn’t have to do anything. I’d opt in via my browser, email client, phone, and operating system and those things would just record what I was reading or writing. They would also be trendable. I could watch a movie of my Theme Cloud and see which words got bigger/smaller over time.
- I could pause or turn off the service when I didn’t want it recording what I was consuming.
- The data would be automatically put into contextual themes. It would know that “interviews” was part of my Agency search and be able to parse the difference between “interviews” for my Agency search and “interviews” for my Business Development efforts.
- It could tell which themes were for work and which were for my personal attention. And this data could be offered as an API for other applications to plug into. Exercise.
The 5 Futures of Attention
1. Retrace my steps.
The most basic application of this new API would be that I could see my history with context. I could get a sense of the trends of my consumption. I could have a macro view of which things were important to me, when. Think history with context. For example, I could start looking for “Planning” over the last 2 months and it would show me links to all the work content related to Business Development.
2. Share it.
Once my attention is collected I can choose to share it. I could make it open and available to everyone or just certain people. I could make parts of it available, say my work attention to all/some co-workers but none of my personal attention. Or I could make all of it available to everyone within my social network whether that’s at work or not.
3. Much higher quality connections.
By sharing my Attention theme cloud, folks would know which themes were important to me and engage with me in more appropriate ways. They would know that right now I’m pretty focused on “Exercise” which would give my social network more information. They could decide to proactively share their insight or information on Exercise or they might find what I’m reading or paying attention to valuable because they too are interested in Exercise. This could help sort out the most relevant times to engage with me. It could also help me networking with more appropriate people who have similar interests based on what they’re reading/writing.
4. Overlay my attention onto other things.
Attention would be a powerful addition the online world we already use. Thanks to attention data, I’d love to take my new and improved social network and filter my RSS reader based on what certain people are reading. Or even better, if I’m on Amazon.com, it would be very valuable to know which people within my social network have also looked at or purchased specific items. The same is true with content at work. I’d love to know who else is paying attention to the same things that I am.
5. New media models
Media is in the attention game. The old way of getting attention was to own the property (like a magazine) and then try to get as many people to read it as possible so that they could charge advertisers for your attention. But our attention is much more fragmented now and mostly falls out of the old advertising network grips. I would imagine that people would/could opt-in to be reached in more meaningful ways by use of Attention. This would require providing some level of value (free internet access, more relevant communication or some other value) for consumers to intice them to participate. No doubt, if media companies could re-model themselves to capitalize on this level of Attention, we’d see a very different Media industry.
Things people have said about this post
Have you read about the Attention Trust? That’s a good start, I learned a lot from Steve Gillmor about this, smart guy.
Also, there are some challenges with attention, you didn’t account for the fact that I have 20 tabs open on 4 browsers (two computers) on during most of the day, and a mobile browser that’s often synched, even with the phone in my pocket.
I’ve heard some solutions for this (like a “time out” that turns off the recorder) but I do think that ‘interaction’ also has to be factored into this measurement.
In the end, it’s ‘engagement’ that you want to measure, but it’s been difficult for anyone to nail down a specific definition.
[…] Go Big Always - The 5 Futures of Attention The most basic application of this new API would be that I could see my history with context. I could get a sense of the trends of my consumption. (tags: lifetivo web3.0) […]
One of my favourite applications for the PC is http://www.timesnapper.com/ - this takes screenshots on a periodic basis so that you can replay your day.
To the best of my knowledge there is no decent equivalent for the Mac.
Once everything we do produces RSS feeds of actions taken, such as Phone calls, UNIX command prompt entries and responses, skype messages, GPS trail of our physical movements etc., and we have the means to filter, generalise and merge them, then we’ll be able and hive off parts of our attention trail for others to see.
This is some big thinking. It feels like another application of the semantic web. Which, unfortunately, may put this idea a bit ahead of it’s time.
While I like the idea of keeping track of attention history (I have turned on, and often use, my Google Web History) the combination of sources is probalby the biggest hurdle. But, referencing Google again, if we can get something like Google Desktop that can track what we do offline and mesh it with what we do online, we’d get a more comprehensive picture of our activities.
What I’m not sure is if all that data will actually lead us to spending our time more productively — I mean even being personally productive not necessarily more productive in the office. I suppose I’d have to start paying attention to where my attention is going.
[…] of things would you want to see in your online experience throughout the day? Check out Sam’s The 5 Futures of Attention for some ideas… SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: ““I’m sorry, could you repeat the […]
Well said, Sam.
Forcing people to tell computers what they do has proven to be a recipe failure.
Computers are only really good at two things. Analysis, and remembering stuff. This kind of software is just an application of those two things, so it definitely should exist.
(But yeah - it kind of doesn’t yet, which is why we’re working on it! )
I’ll back up @jowyang’s comment re AttentionTrust ( http://attentiontrust.org/users/atx - not a lot of recent activity) … there WAS an Attention Vault facility at root.net which no longer seems to exist (”Error Code 11004: Host not found “), which could capture and report on where and how you spent your attention on the web via the AT attention recorder … it had some very interesting stuff, but haven’t seen any explanation for its disappearance, nor news of an alternative … if you come across something, let us know
[…] and shares it with others in the group. Sam Lawrence is looking for a contribution engine when he talks about Attention. But solving the contribution problem is huge. If we could find a way to allow people to contribute […]
People are throwing links around, so I’ll add one more: http://www.rescuetime.com
Looks nice, haven’t tried it yet… my attention is elsewhere.
On a more serious note, this reminds me of those who invest in augmented reality and life streams. We’re a little off from those being widely adopted yet, but with those damned blue tooth headsets on people’s faces already, it can’t be too long now. Eventually our behavior(s) will become the new currency, replacing information.
In a way it’s a step backwards, or perhaps a spiral return. Civilized society was founded on the worship and study of information and the sciences to rise above our behaviors.
I’m curious to see where this will go, these are exciting times.
[…] med en länk som jag la ut för ett tag sedan som “läsvärt” här till höger, posten “The 5 features of Attention” från Go Big […]
In an open and transparent world, this would be great, but when rights are not protected, privacy is paramount - especially over the data of how and when I use my brain for what - against commercial and political interests.
[…] ROA istället. Return of Attention. Klart intressant begrepp. Det stämmer väl överens med posten “The 5 features of Attention” från Go Big […]