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Andrew Bruce Smith of escherman on technology PR. And George Orwell. Mostly.

July 31, 2007 • 3:32 pm

Wealth of information = poverty of attention

As we get bombarded by Facebook alerts, e-mails and RSS feeds, I thought this quote from 1978 Nobel Prize winning scientist Herbert Simon was rather appropriate:

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it
consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information
creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention
efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might
consume it."

How true is that?

Filed under: Facebook

2 Responses

  1. Stephen Davies says:
    July 31, 2007 at 11:47 pm

    A perfect description from a quote that dates almost 30 years ago.

    Reply
  2. Andrew Smith says:
    August 1, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    Plus ca change (I’m saying that a lot at the moment).

    Reply

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