The idea of the Data economy - sometimes called the attention economy - is compelling to our ideas of the future. The most valuable things humans produce now are mostly novel reproducible data sets, rather than anything relying on localized physical energy. However, the Data Economy is unlike other economies in that the most valuable data is widely copied and vice versa. Our intuitions around scarcity and value should be inverted when speaking of valuable data versus valuable materials, requiring new analogies. The new analogy that will be the focus of this essay is of attention in a data economy to mate selection in an ecosystem. Although valuable data is, by its nature, not scarce, attention is both valuable and limited in such an economy, and in turn limits the rate at which data can copy itself.
This is similar to the role mate selection plays in evolution. Because genes are data and reproduction involves a cost, reproduction in nature is similar to interaction in an attention economy. We can liken the male in such an interaction to the 'seller' and the female the 'buyer'. While most of us dislike the idea of our sexuality or romantic instincts being treated as mere economic activity, the goal here is not to analyze romantic or sexual dynamics using an economic analogy. Rather, we seek to intuit rational economic activity in a data economy by leveraging our experience as sexual or romantic beings.
In nature, males can copy their genetic material for a trivial cost resulting in a linear increase, while females can copy their for a high cost, but the result is a new replicator - an exponential increase. Since the quality of the resulting replicator is heavily influenced by the quality of male DNA in the mix, male DNA is valuable - but since it is inexpensive to copy, even high value DNA rarely has a high price attached. Therefore, male sexual experience is analogous to that of an economic 'seller' while female sexual experience is analogous to that of an economic 'buyer'.
Similar dynamics take place if we move our analysis of data economics from the ecological to the cultural. In this sphere memes, in the original sense of the word, take the place of genes. The 'buyer' and 'seller' roles are less clearly defined here - humans are the primary 'buyers' of memes, but while we are also often sellers of memes, we are not the only ones. Also, how aggressively a particular meme is sold often depends more on the nature of the meme than the human carrying it. Therefore it is useful, if not perfectly accurate, to describe humans as buyers of memes and memes themselves as primary sellers of memes.
Although memes are valuable and necessary for social functioning, the cost to reproduce them is so low that they will rarely have a price higher than the bandwidth necessary to adopt them - which might be substantial in some instances. Also, the most valuable memes are likely to be the most widely copied. Therefore the information economy requires us to think more like a romantic or sexual agent than a traditional exchanger of material value.
Since memes are the major product of such an economy but become less scarce every time they are 'bought', the role of scarcity, and therefore currency, falls instead to attention. Attention's role in both human meme uptake and AI training is significant. Essentially, attention is write access to some form of meme recombinator or replicator, making it the object of all memes' desire. Attention is both supply-constrained and valuable, as opposed to Data which is valuable but unlimited in supply.
While the implications of this dynamic are vast and difficult to think through, this essay is concerned with a particular prediction about the kind of meme that will fill our next major need. To raise the odds of reproduction, two avenues are available to a meme replicator. One is to increase its virality - the aggression with which it seeks attention. The other is to increase its utility - the length of time and variety of situations in which a replicator derives value from having paid attention the the meme in the first place.
The former method creates an arms race undesirable from the point of view of the meme purchasers, as more viral memes are only answerable be even more viral memes. One strategy to increase virality is to play on the fears of the human meme buyers, e.g. 'X is a threat to your community, warn everyone about it.' Mems of this nature, having a higher ratio of energy put into the delivery vector as opposed to the payload, sacrifice utility for virality, the opposite of what a meme buyer wants. As these mems take our limited attention, it becomes harder to pay attention to those memes with a better utility/virality ratio.
In contrast to this strategy, one can focus on increasing the utility of ones memes, as this might reduce the rate at which the meme will be reproduced relative to a more viral one, but increase the timespan over which its carrier will devote resources to its proliferation.
Of course, it is possible to combine the two, e.g. "Attention ungry memes are a threat to your community. Tell everyone to practice this method for withholding attention and this method for discerning when it is beneficial to do so".
It is predictable that the outsized value and virality any meme following this format will ensure that some form of it will proliferate in the coming years. The specific content we can expect this wrapper to take will be the focus of a future essay.