Michael Goldhaber

Attention Economy

John Perry Barlow, the Thomas Jefferson of the Internet (Reiss, 1996), said that information wants to be free. If information wants to be and is free, information cannot provide a currency for the economy of the Virtual Nation. What is scarce and valuable in this economy is not information, but human attention (Lanham, 1994, Goldhaber, 1997). This scarcity creates the economy of human attention, not of information . Goldhaber states:

"The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property ...."

According to Goldhaber, attention for individuals is valued more than attention for organizations. Property and wealth can come with attention by placing the individual in a position to get anything, from fame to monetary wealth. The surge in WWW development using animated gifts, interactive forms, and dynamically changed websites provides an effective way to get attention from the citizens of the Virtual Nation. Interestingly, these methods mimic the way traditional commercial advertisers get consumers' attention.

Reputation Economy

Why do hackers spend countless hours to break in to computer hosts and often leave fingerprints or signatures as their triumphant marks? Eric S. Raymond (1998), editor of The New Hacker's Dictionary, suggests that social status in hacker gift culture is determined by what one gives away. In this community, where there is no shortage of computer resources (such as disk space, bandwidth and computing power) there is lack in success measurement. This measurement can only be achieved by reputation among one's peers. Raymond parallels the culture of hackers and that of academics. In academia, new ideas and research are shared and added on through journals and other media. The success or failure of the academic is measured by contributions to these sources. In hacker society, new ideas and research are shared by code sharing. The success or failure of the hacker is measured by contributions to these sources. The reputation economy creates new academic theories or high-quality hacking codes, through peer evaluation. --Rebecca Sukach