What can be said for the centuries-old academic discipline of rhetoric in today's digital age? A great deal, it turns out, according to Richard Lanham in his intentionally provocative new book, The Economics of Attention.

This stimulating study grew out of the author's perception that the age of information has greatly increased the importance of attention, creating an economic order that empowers style and form ('fluff') at the expense of the industrial age's emphasis on physical goods and commodities ('stuff'). Whereas traditional economics deals primarily with the allocation of scarce [End Page 673] material resources, the information age, Lanham argues, urgently requires an understanding of the allocation of attention, a central element in a digital world characterized by a superabundance of information. Indeed, the economics of attention brings us back directly to the classical discipline of rhetoric—which happens to be Lanham's own discipline—in order to recognize the importance of looking at the texture and forms of communicative media (e.g., language or images), and not simply through those media at whatever is being discussed or referred to. But the at/ through distinction is not meant to force a choice between style and substance; instead, Lanham urges that genuine knowledge results from an ability to foster a kind of mental or intellectual oscillation, in which both sides of the equation are kept in play. Indeed, this idea of oscillation is at the heart of many of the book's arguments, including, for example, the desirability of maintaining a connection between what Lanham sees as the two opposing poles of human motivation. At one end of the spectrum is pure competition and self-interest, where winning is everything; at the other end is disinterested behavior, aptly described as play. A mature and fulfilled human being holds both ends of this spectrum in view, with ongoing oscillation between the two.

On a less philosophical plane, the book takes up three important issues that the digital revolution has brought to the fore and for which reflections on the economy of attention have important implications: the communicative possibilities of digital media, and especially multimedia; copyright law; and the organization of higher education. With regard to the first of these areas, Lanham points out that a vast amount of misguided effort has gone into making digital communication imitate traditional forms of communication—so that, for example, a digital book is made to function as much as possible like a traditional printed codex. And whereas there are many digital typefaces, there are almost no 'alphabets that think.' He asks us to consider the expressive possibilities of a kinetic version of the elaborate, decorative lettering used in medieval manuscripts, where letters perform part of the meaning intended by the text. Moving graphic displays, for example, could team up with text to deepen and enhance whatever is being reflected on or communicated. And sound and images could be brought very fruitfully together with text.

(Perhaps the most striking area where an economics of attention has employed digital media to transform traditional behavior lies in the new forms of sociality created by online services like MySpace and online multi-player games—phenomena whose dramatic rise in popularity postdated the bulk of the writing of this book.) The discussion of copyright takes the form of a hilarious dialog that simultaneously parodies a television interview show and the footnoting style characteristic of law journals. While drawing parallels between the litigation surrounding the unauthorized publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Mattel corporation's attempts to limit unauthorized use of the Barbie [End Page 674] doll image, the sketch seeks to underline the ways in which copyright law—based on an industrial economy of stuff—does not take the needs of the economy of attention adequately into account. Finally, Lanham examines the possibilities of the virtual university to raise questions about a number of the assumptions that underlie the organization and practices of contemporary American universities. These range from the idea that university education.

The attention economy explained by David Gauntlett. Web Economics: How things work in the 'attention economy'This page explains how people. This paper describes the fundamental economic features of the attention market in which platforms. The Economics of Attention. Download this Paper Open PDF in.

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If economics is about the allocation of resources, then what is the most precious resource in our new information economy? Certainly not information, for we are drowning in it. No, what we are short of is the attention to make sense of that information.

With all the verve and erudition that have established his earlier books as classics, Richard A. Lanham here traces our epochal move from an economy of things and objects to an economy of attention. According to Lanham, the central commodity in our new age of information is not stuff but style, for style is what competes for our attention amidst the din and deluge of new media. In such a world, intellectual property will become more central to the economy than real property, while the arts and letters will grow to be more crucial than engineering, the physical sciences, and indeed economics as conventionally practiced. For Lanham, the arts and letters are the disciplines that study how human attention is allocated and how cultural capital is created and traded. In an economy of attention, style and substance change places.

The new attention economy, therefore, will anoint a new set of moguls in the business world—not the CEOs or fund managers of yesteryear, but new masters of attention with a grounding in the humanities and liberal arts. Lanham’s The Electronic Word was one of the earliest and most influential books on new electronic culture. The Economics of Attention builds on the best insights of that seminal book to map the new frontier that information technologies have created.

' The Economics of Attention ahould be considered 'important' for its ability to continue the discourse of what social and cultural conditions have changed as the world of communication changes.... Overall this is a balanced look at actual communicative development. Instead of trying to force the idea of total paradigm shift, Lanham instead embraces the possibilities of paradigm oscillation. If social and communicative theory is of any interest to you, then you should pay close attention to The Economics of Attention.'