a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention

Hello friends 👋 and welcome to my first post on this blog.

I'm going to start with these words that rattle around in my brain a fair bit. Herbert A. Simon, speaking at Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore (1971) with his speech "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" -

There is only so much lettuce to go around, and it will have to be allocated somehow among the rabbits.

Similarly, in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes.

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.

Three astute observations in 1971 that now read like axioms of our age

• In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes.
• What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.
• Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention

I think an interesting lens through which to interrogate the way I spend my time online. And if nothing else valuable principles to consider when designing products or tools.

I have a copy of the PDF of the entire transcript of this speech. To be honest I can't remember where it came from. I may have downloaded it when I worked in a role that had access to JSTOR. But just in case I'll post a copy of it here for fear of link rot.

It's an interesting read, and also notable for featuring an extremely cool numeral 2 from Wayne Stettler's 1966 font, Neil Pro.

And remember, there is only so much lettuce to go around.