Thorngate, W. (Warren)

Carleton University's Institutional Repository

It is impossible to get information in or out of ourhead without paying attention. Yet attention, asHerbert Simon has noted, is a limited resource.As a result, exchanging attention for informationnot only defines communication, it is also pro-vides the sufficient conditions for an economy ofattention based on principles rather different thanthose taught in traditional economics courses.Some of these principles allow us better to under-stand the recursive evolution of information, com-munication and attention technologies, the firsttwo assisting us to produce and distribute infor-mation, the last assisting us to consume it. Otherprinciples allow us to speculate about the socialand organizational consequences of this recursiveevolution by distinguishing information thatreduces demand for additional attention frominformation that increases it. My talk will outlinesome of the principles of attentional economicsand sample some of their implications forComputer Supported Cooperative Work. About the speaker:Following an unsuccessful career as a classicalguitarist, Warren Thorngate received his BA inPsychology and Mathematics from the Universityof California, Santa Barbara, then fled to Canadato obtain two more psychology degrees at theUniversity of British Columbia, specializing inthe study of human decision making and socialbehavior. Twenty-five years ago he began to writeabout evidential statistics, the limits of researchmethods, the evolution of adjudicated contestsand the economics of attention, ideas leading himto a term as president of the International Societyfor Theoretical Psychology but otherwise ignored.A chance opportunity for adventure led him tospend over a decade developing and evaluatingcomputer mediated communication and informa-tion science projects in Latin America, culminat-ing in the creation of Internet facilities at theUniversity of Havana. While working on theseprojects, he became a founding member of theComputer User Research and Evaluation (CURE)group at Carleton University. Good fortune andhelpful colleagues allowed him to serve as visit-ing professor in Berkeley, Leningrad, Melbourne,Havana, Santiago, Warsaw and Tehran. He is cur-rently writing a book on the Economics ofAttention which will include ideas from this pres-entation. Got a Minute? How Technology Affects theEconomy of Attention Warren Thorngate, Professor, Psychology Department, Carleton University, Ottawa,Ontario, K1S 5B6, Canada 361Closing Plenary

Got a minute? How technology affects the economy of attention

https://ir.library.carleton.ca/pub/10898/p361-closing_plenary.pdf

Got a minute? How technology affects the economy of attention

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