TLDR - Digital interaction w/o stealing attention
Websites, apps, social media, and every digital platform are built around capturing and monetizing attention, yet most of these systems treat attention as a vague, immeasurable force rather than a resource that can be priced, traded, and optimized like money or time.
One of the most striking experiments in the dissertation found that users needed 0.6¢ more compensation to complete tasks on an ugly CAPTCHA interface. That might sound trivial, but at scale, it translates into millions of dollars in lost productivity and engagement.
1. Bad design not only annoys the living crap out of users, it literally costs them money in cognitive effort
2. Every friction points (bad UI, slow load times, intrusive ads) is an eocnomic penalty ... think every clunky interface forces you to spend an extra 10s per tx (lol to all the bridges out there) equating to 100s of in unpaid labor hours over time
It's pretty obvious by now by our tech overlords exploit this principle, but mostly in reverse. They design interfaces that make leaving harder (endless scroll, autoplay, dark patterns) rather than optimizing for efficiency.
Projects/companies that start paying to attention to attention by reducing waste, streamlining experience etc outcompete those playing the endless scroll/engagement trap.
A Measurable Attention Economics:
https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation.html