Overcoming information overload with circular attention economies

For most researchers, information overload results in a constant feeling of falling behind the exponential growth of knowledge in their field, too many open browser tabs and not enough ways to decide which ones to close and which to read

Journals used to be the answer; traditionally, they were tasked with filtering out poor research and curating high quality work. However, journals have fundamentally failed to scale with the explosion of research output, often taking years to review and publish while knowledge evolves at internet speed. Moreover, commercial incentive structures hav... See more

Navigating the perils and promise of the digital age requires, according to author James Williams, that “we give the right sort of attention to the right sort of things... A major function, if not the primary purpose, of information technology should be to advance this end.”

there is a fundamentally social aspect of attention that cannot and should not be automated. Shared attention is part of what makes us human. We care about what human peers and experts find interesting, not just what opaque algorithms recommend.