Attention Must Be Paid (For)

Esther Dyson: “Many companies [in the Internet age] are looking for ways to automate the act of ‘paying attention’ to individual customers on a grand scale, even as many of them also confuse attention with intention (to buy). … But attention is neither a currency nor a commodity. It can, to some extent, be bought and sold. But it cannot be traded to third parties, and it is not entirely fungible.”