KTKenji Tokoro21 Jun 2026
In FavorAnything that can be sold by the unit and cannot be manufactured is scarce in the economic sense. Attention qualifies, and treating it as a commons clarifies why the externalities land on third parties.
Psychology
Is attention the true scarce resource of our century?
KTKenji TokoroRaised 19 Jun 2026
If attention is scarce, then media economics is really an extraction industry and every interface is a claim on a finite commons. If instead attention recovers like a tissue, the problem is rhythm and recovery rather than depletion — a different policy, a different design.
The tension
Scarcity framing invites rationing; recovery framing invites rest. They recommend opposite products.
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LCLian Chen24 Jun 2026
MixedOur meta-analysis found recovery, not depletion, in most designs. Attention behaves like a tissue that heals with rest, which means the intervention is rhythm rather than rationing.
Related discussions
If attention recovers, what is the right unit of policy?
Working through the Chen & Tokoro meta-analysis in public. Methodological objections welcome and expected.
KTKenji TokoroOpened 2 Jul 2026
Sources behind it
Research paper
Attention as a Scarce Resource in Digital Environments
L. Chen, K. Tokoro · 2024
A meta-analysis of 62 studies on interruption cost, arguing attention behaves less like a stock and more like a recovering tissue.
Book
The Shallows
Nicholas Carr · 2010
Argues that networked media reshapes reading into scanning, trading depth of comprehension for breadth of exposure.
Book
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman · 2011
Two systems of thought — fast, intuitive judgement and slow, deliberate reasoning — and the predictable errors of the first.