jordan on Nostr: Is attention becoming the internet's fiat currency? Human creativity once mined ...
Is attention becoming the internet's fiat currency?
Human creativity once mined attention like gold... authentic content was the bedrock of online value creation.
Each piece required time, thought, and genuine human insight.
But today's landscape has shifted dramatically with the introduction of a new monetary policy:
AI's printing press.
The content marketplace is experiencing an evolution:
• the noise is getting louder
• attention spans are shrinking
• content is getting less human
AI tools can generate endless streams of attention-grabbing material, flooding our digital economy with low-effort content.
Just as printing money devalues a currency, mass-producing content without human insight devalues attention.
So what does this mean for creators?
The fact that such content is able to gain such viewership makes me believe that traditional creators/influencers will grow to be less & less concerned with their actual authenticity...
Because scaling their output is going to become far more important, in order to compete for attention amidst the AI-generated noise.
Traditional creators will face a brutal choice in this new economy. They can either:
• Maintain an "artisanal" approach while harnessing AI, crafting high-quality, authentic content at a human pace
or
• Merge with AI and join the race to scale by sacrificing quality and human creative input
The market pressure is clear...
Which brings us to the deeper cost of this attention economy:
Humans use language as a tool, but language is AI's fundamental reality.
When we too fully rely on its cognitive abilities, we start to lose sight of our own, until we don't bother using them at all anymore. This process will make us even more robotic, more complacent, more... malleable.
On this trajectory, nuance will eventually only exist to the extent of the the AI's creative or reasoning constraints.
And that there will be the limits of human critical thinking.
When we outsource our creativity to AI, we don't just change how we create, we change how we think.
I think the next era of content will determine whether attention remains a meaningful measure of value in our digital economy, or whether it becomes so inflated that we need to find an entirely new currency of online worth...
The challenge for creators isn't just about maintaining relevance; it's about preserving the very essence of human expression in an increasingly automated marketplace of ideas.
Human creativity once mined attention like gold... authentic content was the bedrock of online value creation.
Each piece required time, thought, and genuine human insight.
But today's landscape has shifted dramatically with the introduction of a new monetary policy:
AI's printing press.
The content marketplace is experiencing an evolution:
• the noise is getting louder
• attention spans are shrinking
• content is getting less human
AI tools can generate endless streams of attention-grabbing material, flooding our digital economy with low-effort content.
Just as printing money devalues a currency, mass-producing content without human insight devalues attention.
So what does this mean for creators?
The fact that such content is able to gain such viewership makes me believe that traditional creators/influencers will grow to be less & less concerned with their actual authenticity...
Because scaling their output is going to become far more important, in order to compete for attention amidst the AI-generated noise.
Traditional creators will face a brutal choice in this new economy. They can either:
• Maintain an "artisanal" approach while harnessing AI, crafting high-quality, authentic content at a human pace
or
• Merge with AI and join the race to scale by sacrificing quality and human creative input
The market pressure is clear...
Which brings us to the deeper cost of this attention economy:
Humans use language as a tool, but language is AI's fundamental reality.
When we too fully rely on its cognitive abilities, we start to lose sight of our own, until we don't bother using them at all anymore. This process will make us even more robotic, more complacent, more... malleable.
On this trajectory, nuance will eventually only exist to the extent of the the AI's creative or reasoning constraints.
And that there will be the limits of human critical thinking.
When we outsource our creativity to AI, we don't just change how we create, we change how we think.
I think the next era of content will determine whether attention remains a meaningful measure of value in our digital economy, or whether it becomes so inflated that we need to find an entirely new currency of online worth...
The challenge for creators isn't just about maintaining relevance; it's about preserving the very essence of human expression in an increasingly automated marketplace of ideas.