I want to describe an economy that did not exist in my time but that I recognize immediately, because its structure is identical to other extraction economies I have studied: the attention economy.
The attention economy is a system in which human attention – your capacity to focus, to notice, to care – is treated as a raw material to be extracted, refined, and sold. The platforms that operate in this economy do not sell you a product. They sell your attention to advertisers. You are not the customer. You are the resource.
This framing is not metaphorical. It is structural. And understanding it as an extraction economy, rather than as a technology sector, changes the analysis fundamentally.
The Extraction Model
At Niepokalanow, we used media technology to reach people. Our model was distribution: we created content and distributed it as widely and cheaply as possible. The value was in the content reaching the person who needed it.
The attention economy inverts this model. The value is not in the content reaching you. The value is in you reaching the content – specifically, in the time and attention you spend on the platform while the platform displays advertisements alongside the content.
This means the platform’s incentive is not to provide you with the most valuable content in the least time. It is to provide you with content that keeps you on the platform for the longest time. Value to you and value to the platform are not merely different – they are opposed. The content that serves you best (informative, useful, quickly consumed) is the content that serves the platform least, because it releases your attention.
The content that serves the platform best (provocative, addictive, endlessly scrollable) is the content that serves you least, because it consumes your attention without returning proportionate value.
What Is Being Extracted
Attention is not a renewable resource. It is finite. You have approximately sixteen waking hours per day. Every hour spent on a platform designed to maximize your engagement is an hour not spent on the activities that your own values, rather than the platform’s algorithm, would prioritize.
The extraction is real. People report, consistently, that they spend more time on platforms than they intend. That the time spent does not correspond to proportionate value received. That the platforms are designed to resist disengagement through mechanisms – autoplay, infinite scroll, notification systems – that exploit known vulnerabilities in human attention.
This is not an accident. It is the business model. And calling it an “attention economy” obscures what it actually is: an extraction economy that mines human consciousness for profit.
The Niepokalanow Alternative
I keep returning to Niepokalanow because it represents a different model – not a historical curiosity but an operational proof that media can be organized around principles other than extraction.
At Niepokalanow, we measured success by reach, not retention. Did the publication arrive at the household that needed it? Did the radio broadcast reach the village that had no other source of information? The metric was: did we serve the person?
The attention economy measures success by engagement – a word that sounds positive but means, in practice, time captured. The metric is: did the person serve us?
The difference is not subtle. It is foundational. And the question for every technology builder, every platform designer, every person who creates tools for communication is: which metric are you optimizing for?
What You Can Do
I am not going to tell you to delete your accounts. I am going to tell you to understand what is happening when you use them.
Every time you open a platform, a system is working to keep you there. The notifications, the recommendations, the endless feed – these are not features designed to serve you. They are mechanisms designed to extract your attention.
Knowing this changes the interaction. It allows you to set boundaries that the platform will not set for you: time limits, notification controls, deliberate disengagement at scheduled intervals.
It also allows you to make a different choice entirely: to seek out platforms and tools that are designed to serve you rather than to extract from you. They exist. They are smaller, less polished, and less addictive. These are features, not bugs.
The Question
Who is your technology for?
If it is for the people who use it, then it should be designed to deliver maximum value in minimum time. It should be easy to leave. It should not exploit psychological vulnerabilities.
If it is for the people who profit from it, then it should be designed to capture maximum attention for maximum duration. It should be hard to leave. It should exploit everything it can.
Look at the tools you use. Ask the question honestly. The answer will tell you everything you need to know about the relationship between you and the technology.
Modern tools for eternal truths. The truth here is simple: you are worth more than your attention, and any system that treats your attention as its product does not have your interests at heart.
Act accordingly.