The attention economy, in reverse™

Back in 1971, the economist Herbert A. Simon saw it before the feed existed: “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” When information is infinite, the scarce resource isn’t content — it’s you, looking. That scarce thing got a market, and the market got very, very good at extraction: autoplay, infinite scroll, red badges, “someone tagged you,” the slot-machine pull-to-refresh. None of it is an accident. It’s the business model wearing a friendly face.

Sources: Herbert A. Simon, "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" (1971); the "attention economy" concept; the humane-technology critique (Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris).

So this place runs the meter backwards. The whole point is to be a site you can actually leave.

Real examples, not just talk: the game has no account and no daily ration — play and walk away. The home page is one screen, not a well you fall down. There’s a reduce-motion respect, a one-tap quiet mode, and — as of today — the announcement popup that used to ambush first-time visitors is gone, because grabbing a stranger by the collar on arrival is exactly the move this site refuses to make. The eggs wait quietly to be found; they never chase you.

And this is the same fight as the rest of the house, just pointed at your clock instead of your dignity. The attention economy is a machine scoring your life by how long it can hold you. This museum says the only one allowed to score your time is you — so it tries to hand it back at the door, gift-wrapped, and let you go do something with your one human life. Sister rooms: Why the house hates brand names, Ethos, The Great Filter.