Cory Doctorow: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention – Locus Online

Doctorow with some perspective and framing for the attention economy. He posits this as a constant arms race with the predator and prey.

There is a war for your attention, and like all adversarial scenarios, the sides develop new countermeasures and then new tactics to overcome those countermeasures. The predator carves the prey, the prey carves the preda­tor.

I would encourage us all to ask an important question in the attention war. Is this useful? Be honest with yourself. How useful is something to your objectives. Of course this begs the question that you have to know your objectives, which is another topic entirely.