The Attention Economy — humansonly.fm

A deep dive on the events of the past that brought you the current viral form of ingesting information: short-form videos. You may have read about how short videos are bad (especially for children) but how did we get from reading newspaper ads to watching AI-generated videos rotting your brain? The simple metric is attention. It’s free, can have the most intrinsic value in driving sales, and is the last real frontier for marketers (and for that matter, everyone selling something). Take a ride through the history of the attention economy and how we got here, and where we might be going—on Humans Only!

Topics Covered

The history of attention commodification (1833–2025)
How the HTTP cookie went from privacy tool to surveillance weapon
The forefathers and founders of Attention as a commodity and the literature/thought leaders around this prior to modern attention economics

Show Notes & Citations

Anchor Studies

Yan, M., et al. (2024). “Mobile phone short video use negatively impacts attention functions: an EEG study.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (PMC11236742) — EEG study finding r = −0.395 correlation between short-form video addiction and reduced prefrontal theta power during executive control tasks.
Barton, A., & Smyth, M. (2025). “Context-switching in short-form videos: What is the impact on prospective memory?” Memory — Rapid context-switching in TikTok-style consumption impairs prospective memory formation.

Foundational Theory

Simon, H. (1971). “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World.” Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest — Origin of the attention economy concept: “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Goldhaber, M. (1997). “The Attention Economy and the Net.” First Monday — First application of attention economics to digital networks. Predicted attention would become the dominant currency of the internet age.
Posner, M.I., & Petersen, S.E. (1990). “The Attention System of the Human Brain.” Annual Review of Neuroscience — Foundational model identifying three attention networks: alerting, orienting, and executive control.

History & Market Analysis

Wu, T. (2016). The Attention Merchants — Comprehensive history from penny press (1833) through digital era. Documents each phase of attention commodification.
Montulli, L. (1994). HTTP Cookie Specification (Netscape) — Original design intended to protect privacy by avoiding permanent browser identification.
Financial Times (1996). Cookie Privacy Investigation — First major exposure of advertising industry weaponizing cookies for surveillance.
IETF RFC 2109 (1997) — Recommended browsers block third-party cookies by default. Netscape and IE declined to implement.

Platform Economics

Meta Investor Relations (2024) — $164B revenue, 97.3% from advertising, $49.63 per user annually.
Statista (2025). Global Digital Advertising Market — $650B (2025), projected $1.4T by 2034.

Lifetime Usage Statistics

Al Jazeera (2023). “How much time do we spend on social media?” — At current usage rates (141 min/day global average), a 16-year-old will spend approximately 5.5 years of remaining life on social media (7.6% of total lifespan).
BroadbandSearch (2024). Social Media Usage Statistics — Alternative calculation: 6 years 8 months (9.1% of life) assuming age 10 start, 73-year lifespan.

Creator Economy

Duffy, B.E. (2017). (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love — Documents how “democratized creation” functions as distributed unpaid labor benefiting platforms.
YouTube Creator Statistics (2023) — Top 3% of channels capture 90% of total views.

Links & Resources

Key Books

Simon, H. (1971). “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” — Origin of “attention economy” concept
Goldhaber, M. (1997). “The Attention Economy and the Net” — First digital application
Wu, T. (2016). The Attention Merchants — Historical account

Tools

One Sec App — 57% usage reduction from one-second friction
Self-Determination Theory

This is Humans Only. I’m Erikk Shupp.