Chris Hayes: The Sirens' Call

This book is a solid entry point if you haven’t read much about the attention economy. What makes it stand out is Hayes’ own experience—he’s spent his career trying to grab, hold, and monetize attention as a cable news anchor. This goes beyond memoir and is a well-researched look at how attention became the scarce, contested resource it is today.

One of the strongest parts of the book is Hayes’ use of foundational ideas, particularly from Herbert Simon. He revisits Simon’s famous argument that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” and goes a step further—showing how the Information Age didn’t just lead to the Attention Age but was always the Attention Age. Information and attention aren’t separate because information consumes attention, so the more information we create, the more we have to fight for the capacity to process it.

There are plenty of moments like this in the book—where Hayes reframes familiar concepts in a way that makes you stop and reconsider. One insight that stuck with me is his observation that designing useful information systems isn’t just about making information accessible but also about making sure certain information is withheld from attention. That’s counterintuitive in a world obsessed with transparency and information overload, but it makes perfect sense when you consider how real-world decision-making works.

Hayes also throws out some ideas that might be a stretch but are still worth chewing on—like the possibility that the hard limit on human attention is part of the mystery behind stagnant productivity. If we can’t expand attention and cognition the way we’ve scaled other inputs like energy or computation, maybe that’s a fundamental bottleneck to economic growth. It’s a bold claim, and not necessarily a proven one, but it’s an interesting way to reframe a long-standing puzzle. Huh. Maybe.

If you’re already deep into the literature on the attention economy, this book won’t necessarily break new ground, but it’s a fresh, engaging take on the problem from someone who has lived inside it. And if you’re new to the space, it’s a great place to start.

If you want more reading on attention, I'd recommend:

• Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, by James Williams. Williams is a former Google strategist turned Oxford philosopher, this book explores how modern technology captures our attention and the implications for human freedom.
• Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari. This book investigates the decline of our attention spans, attributing it to modern technology and societal changes and offers some ideas for getting it back.
• The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, by Tim Wu. One of the early books on the Attention Economy, it provides a historical account of how industries have commodified human attention, from early advertisements to the rise of the internet.
• Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, by Tim Hwang. This book examines the economics of online advertising and its impact on the internet's infrastructure, drawing parallels to the unsustainable practices similar to the subprime mortgage crisis.
• Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, by Maggie Jackson. The OG book on attention explores how our fragmented, tech-driven lives are eroding deep attention, with consequences for learning, relationships, and culture.