Herein a recipe for producing what looks like some kind of careful long term reasonable insight into a question, but what is really a coping strategy for the complete inability to be attentive to anything for very long.

Frequent contributors get more feedback, which makes them contribute more; getting positive feedback loops going is critical to the success of crowdsourced sites. With data from Digg and Youtube.

In conclusion, the online advertising experiment in which so many of us have engaged is really only ten years or so old. Those who say that it's "mature" are not only mistaken, but they drastically underestimate what a true break the web is from the offline media that came before. We've had a few hundred years to learn to monetize print, over 75 years to monetize TV, and, most importantly, millennia to build business models based on scarcity. In contrast, our collective effort to monetize post-scarcity digital media have only just begun.

stop reading this bookmark and GET BACK TO WORK YOU SLACKER. "Columnist David Brooks, commenting in the Dec. 16th New York Times about Malcolm Gladwell's latest book called "Outliers," made a statement as profound as it was accurate: "Control of attention is the ultimate individual power," he wrote. "People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them."

yet another systematic rationalization of more and more sophisticated ways of ignoring people with technology

Where ever attention flows, money will follow.

Almost anything else except attention can be manufactured as a commodity. Luxury goods are only luxuries temporarily. They quickly are counterfeited and commodified. Premium brands are only premium because they garner a surplus of attention.

Ed Vielmetti is Ann Arbor's pied piper of Web 2.0 new urbanist geek culture and all round swell guy. A relentless networker and vital strand in the social and high tech spiderweb of A2 start ups and up starts, his blog is really more of a free-for-all of interesting links and informational tidbits. For short attention spans and expansive minds.

I don’t know if this is a factor of my rapidly advancing age and my increasing inability to suffer what I consider to be foolish behavior gladly, but this isn’t the social community I want to be a part of. I want to be part of a community where people are willing to share their expertise so that we all get better. I want to be part of a community that mimics that hoary old cliche about rising tides that lift all boats. I think this is why, now that I’m working in a library, I feel I’m finally surrounded by people who understand the benefit of the collective we, and how our societies — physical and virtual — are made stronger by nurturing a commonwealth of ideas where those who have access feel a sense of responsibility to those who don’t.

There’s an interesting noticing-plus-time version as well. For example, while traveling through Japan earlier this year, I took 1,400 pictures in two weeks. Maybe a sign or person would catch my eye or activate my “spider sense.” In many cases, I only knew that something was up, that there was a point of interest to capture. As a photographer, I’ve learned to hear that voice and take the shot whenever that happens. In a place like Japan at times I wouldn’t know what it was I was documenting or even be able to explain why I was taking the picture (beyond describing the scene as “cool”). But once I’d noticed something and photographed it, chances were good that I’d notice it again—as if that click of opening the shutter coincided with the creation of a new info-capture zone in my brain.

We want to find an acceptable way to help us make sure that we’re truly tackling topics important to you, our valued readers, so we’re trialling a method for producing and presenting on-line surveys. If you have a moment, please complete our short survey into how people manage their time at work. It will take you less than five minutes — probably less than three. We’ll report back the results in a week or so.

Instead we are now struggling to cope with a different problem - the problem of filtering for what is really important or relevant now and in the near-future. With limited time and attention, we have to be careful what we look for and what we pay attention to. This is the mindset of the daytrader. Bet wrong and you could end up wasting your precious resources, bet right and you could find the motherlode before the rest of the world and gain valuable advantages by being first. Daytraders are focused on discovering and keeping track of trends. It's a very different focus and activity from being a librarian, and it's what we are all moving towards.

“Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to.” I believe I first heard this exhortation from Howard Rheingold. Don’t know if he said it first or got it from some other wise person. It’s always struck me as good advice. And as I return from a week spent entirely offline I find myself wanting to take it — in a systematic way.

People go on diets where they watch what their bodies consume. Some of us keep budgets where we track the money we earn and spend. What about pursuing a similar approach to the information we feed our minds?

If I like a product, it’s because it works, not because the people who created it were nice to me or nice to librarians. My love isn’t for sale.

i suspect that cyberspace exists because it is the purest manifestation of the mass (masse) as Jean Beaudrilliard described it. it is a black hole; it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as spectacle.

“paying attention to irrelevant details,” is a phrase that has stuck in my mind for decades, since I read it in a research paper about brain functioning.

7) I will try not to post anything principally for the purpose of attracting attention.

This paper provides an overview of the system, with emphasis on the module that proposes the next item to which an administrator should give attention and suggests the appropriate action to perform with respect to that item.

"checklist, review, accuracy. orderly, errors, omissions, precise, thorough"

I have never, ever, ever seen a great software developer who does not have amazing attention to detail.

"If attention is like a spotlight, then a good mood will widen that spotlight, while a negative mood will focus it very tightly," said Adam Anderson, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto in Canada and author of the study.

Three basic steps can help make your practice more efficient and less stressful: (1) organizing your desk, office and practice; (2) implementing uniform systems to ensure accuracy; and (3) avoiding inattentiveness due to familiarity and routine work.

Vrinat and his staff went about their work with a serene perfectionism; no detail escaped their notice, but they made flawlessness look easy and fun. Above all, they were guided by a determination to send every client home satiated, smiling, and happy.

I’m not the best at recording my time as I work on stuff. And I’ve never found the perfect time-logging application, anyway.

I believe e-mail is diverting our best waking hours from thinking, conceptualizing and dreaming big ideas.

Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy. One man’s odyssey through the nightmare of infinite connectivity

brad horowitz quote - certain amount of moments in our life - spend our attention in the most valuable way

mindfulness as “not hitting someone in the mouth.”

The table below shows the largest 50 sites circa August 2001, based on monthly attention. More importantly, it also shows how that attention share has shifted since.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

Stowe Boyd argues eloquently that it is the new normal, but not everyone agrees. His talk at Reboot9 (it looked pretty similar to the talk he gave at Etel) took a swipe at Linda Stone's characterization of Continuous Partial Attention as a disorder.

i met linda stone at idea - she was awesome to sit next to. i'll bet she's more right than stowe on this one.

A feature on the New York Times' website that lists the stories most e-mailed by readers is destroying morale and escalating tensions among the once-dignified and professional Times staff, sources within the newspaper of record said Tuesday.

Ted Nadeau says our non-monetary assets are: Identity, Attention, Intention, Influence, Reputation. (In addition to Str Dex Int Wis Con Cha.) (Roll 3d6) thanks whump

I'm completely fascinated by Twitter right now--in much the same way I was by blogging four years ago, and by ICQ years before that.

Sure, we can have more sources of information. But in abundance, we will rely on our social networks as the filter. Good thing we keep passing the good stuff along so we can drop reading the rest.

In short, the lower the cognitive load of your interface, the more users will use your interface, and the more often they will use it.

cory is teh r0x0r

this is generally true for other online communities, not just flickr. how to be interesting? be interested.

i'm looking for a page to illustrate Stephen Abram's "thermograph" of how users read pages

attention and focus are part of the big problems of the post-information age. one solution to the problem of too many feeds to watch is to aggregate them all together and clip out the links that are mutually reinforcing.

"reverse engineer the attention networks"

"Art is about paying attention."

excellent session summary

Hallowell again - if you always just respond to stimulation, you never go deep

Hallowell: ADD as a reaction to the environement

Katie Hafner on distraction while online