AttentionTrust Empowers Web Surfers

Ed Batista is striving to raise awareness of that which lies at the center of all web browsing experiences, one’s attention. AttentionTrust is a non-profit working to empower people to exert greater control over their “attention data,” records reflecting what they have paid attention to and what they have ignored.

Each of us is an “Attention Owner” and our attention is a form of currency that we spend whenever we pay attention. It’s a currency the value of which is proportional to the amount of trust present in the system. If one is going to share their attention data, they must trust that it will be used in ways that are ethical. The more trust, the more value can be derived from the data. Given that we’ve moved off of the gold standard, people are accustomed to currency the value of which is founded on trust. It’s not a huge leap then to the “Attention Economy”.

You can learn more at AttentionTrust and even download a Firefox plug-in they’ve developed.