We are at a major inflection point in our internet journey: transitioning from earning and packaging attention to selling summarization and automation

Transitioning from the Attention Era to the Automation Era

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2024-11-18 21:30:02

We are at a major inflection point in our internet journey: transitioning from earning and packaging attention to selling summarization and automation.

The first era – the Attention Era – was marked by the creation of giant piles of content and connections, which platforms fostered, sifted through, and presented to you in the hope that you would spend more time with them. The attention platforms earned was then sold to advertisers. Rinse and repeat.

This new era – the Automation Era – is marked by platforms managing the content and connections for you, so you can spend your attention elsewhere.

Perplexity’s AI search can now buy products for you. OpenAI’s ChatGPT will read web pages for you. Apple’s Apple Intelligence will read your notifications. And Google’s Gmail will summarize long threads and emails.

One question raised is what will be automated and what will deserve attention? Product research, price comparison, and purchasing is something we’re happy to offload for most things. But what about reading social feeds? Or watching video?