Back in 1971, Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon wrote:
“What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
That was in 1971… here are a list of the best inventions of 1971
- The dot-matrix printer
- The food processor
- The liquid-crystal display (LCD)
- The microprocessor
- VCR or videocassette
Herbert was pointing this out years before: cell phones, text messaging, AOL, instant messaging, snapchat, twitter, instagram, redditt, 24 hour news.. the list goes on.
What is consuming your attention?