MeritocraticAttentionEconomy

Transcluded from AgentEconomy

My comment :

This version of an AttentionElite is what was outlined by Bard and Soderqvist under the title of Netocracy. They could see this happening in the 1990s.

The problem is that any elite wants to preserve its status and keep potential rivals down. So what they'll do with their power is use it to maintain their dominance of attention, and this means using whatever mechanism they can to prevent other people getting any.

We already see this with "the algorithm" in social media that no longer shows you your friends or people you follow, but continually shows you what the platform owners calculate will keep you paying attention to their platform.

So it's not clear that the future attention economy will be at all meritocratic with people winning resources for their projects due to vision, values and consistency. It might well be that the system will be so gamed that it's almost impossible for outsiders to cut through the noise and machinations of the platforms whatever their vision and values.