THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
THE VALUE OF INFORMATION
Fazmina Imamudeen ponders how attention has become a defining commodity
In 1971, economist and Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon made an observation that attracted little attention at the time but has since become one of the most accurate predictions of the digital age. “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” he wrote, while examining how organisations manage information.
Simon understood that technological progress wouldn’t have society searching for knowledge; and would instead, leave it overwhelmed. The scarce resource wouldn’t be information itself but the human capacity to process it.
More than 50 years later, that scarcity has become the basis of a trillion dollar economy. Google, Meta, TikTok and Netflix don’t simply compete through innovation or superior products; they strive to gain a greater share of the finite hours people spend awake.
Every additional minute spent on a platform generates advertising revenue, behavioural data or subscription value. Attention has ceased to be a byproduct of business – it has become the business model itself.
While economics treats land, labour and capital as the principal factors of production, the digital economy has introduced another feature. Without sustained attention, advertisements go unseen, subscriptions lapse, brands disappear into obscurity and even the most sophisticated AI becomes commercially irrelevant.
Competition for attention is older than the internet. Newspaper publishers relied on striking headlines to increase circulation while commercial broadcasters fought relentlessly for larger audiences because advertisers paid for visibility.
Digital technology transformed that familiar contest into something far more precise. Every search query, every pause over a video and every swipe across a screen becomes behavioural data, which enables algorithms to predict what users are likely to engage with next with remarkable accuracy.
Retailers now measure engagement alongside sales. Financial institutions invest heavily in digital experiences that encourage customers to remain within their applications. Universities compete with personalised entertainment for students’ concentration while news organisations increasingly find themselves competing against creators, influencers and algorithms rather than only rival businesses.
Almost every industry now operates within the same marketplace for attention, regardless of the products it sells.
Unfortunately for us, the technologies that promise greater efficiency frequently depend on consuming more and more of our time. Infinite scrolling removes natural stopping points, recommendation engines minimise opportunities to disengage and notifications are carefully engineered to draw users back.
Their effectiveness is reflected not merely in user numbers but in company valuations too. The longer attention can be retained, the more valuable the platform becomes.
But consequences are surfacing in places that balance sheets rarely measure. Economists have long associated productivity with investment, skills and innovation. Yet, none of these produce meaningful results without sustained concentration.
Fragmented attention affects decision making, creativity and the ability to perform complex cognitive work. Organisations seeking productivity gains may therefore be overlooking one of their most important resources: the quality of their employees’ attention.
This conversation deserves greater prominence in Sri Lanka than it currently receives. As businesses accelerate digital transformation and consumers spend more of their lives online, local firms are competing within the same attention marketplace as the world’s largest technology companies.
The challenge therefore, is no longer about simply producing better products or more persuasive advertising; it’s about earning attention in an environment that’s deliberately designed to divide it.
Markets have always rewarded those who identify scarcity before everyone else. Oil defined one era. Data appeared to define the next. The defining scarcity of our time may prove to be neither.
In an economy flooded with information, attention has become the resource from which value, influence and productivity flow. Businesses have already recognised this reality but the more important question is whether the public has done so too.
