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Attention. What is it, and how does it work? I’m still figuring that one out, and that’s why I’ve been closely following Attention Trust, a group which aims to “promote the basic rights of attention owners”. Essentia…

I had two thoughts today about contexts where attention data could be useful–one serious, the other fanciful. My wife is a reference librarian and legal research instructor at a law school. Her students and faculty members are constantly devouring huge

For what it’s worth, I think Ed Batista seems like a really cool guy. Just from reading his blog I feel a lot better about him being the ED of this group than if it had nefarious corporate backing. But maybe that’s a nefarious corporate coverup. I don’t think so, though.

Great issues raised in the comments above. I agree that AT site is somewhat vague. That’s partly unintentional, and I expect to clarify the language on the site as we move forward. But it’s also partly by design, because we’re fully aware that we don’t have all the answers, and we want people with creative ideas to get involved with AT and help us fill in the blanks.

In short, the concept is that instead of waiting for spyware to capture your clickstream, you capture it yourself. The benefits as described in the article are too high-falutin’ to be realistic, but presumably in the real world, the main benefit of ATX will be to sell what is effectively your CRM data to big companies. If you like analogies, this of it as volunteering to be part of a paid consumer focus group. Or if you like more cynical analogies, think of it as being a lab chimp…

The first thing that struck me was that the concept is very libertarian in nature, and thus will probably not catch on with the wider public. The psychology of privacy presents a lot of problems: people don’t like to think they’re being watched, and presenting a program in which they consent to being watched all the time is anathema to most unless they’re being handsomely paid (as in focus groups). This is particularly true for those who only surf the Web for fun, as they don’t want to concern themselves with anything that doesn’t sound like fun.

Another obstacle relates to the argument about carrying your personalisations across different service providers is that many people like having different personae, and don’t want to be defined as one single entity. The persona they project to a single parent support group will be different to the persona they project at a computer games forum, and different again to the one they present at a P2P porn-sharing message board. If ATX can accomodate different personae for a single person, that might help drag more people in.