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Rock on, James Governor:

Respect is what matters. Trust emerges from respect.

Respect is a more important than attention. Who gives a shit if you're Technorati 100? Really.

Attention is, like, all about being "popular", which is fine if you're in high school in Santa Monica but is really no basis for living.

You should probably write, work and even play with respect, rather than attention in mind.

Respect can underpin attention but attention shouldn't underpin respect. Make a contribution. Don't obsess about inbound links, column inches or TV appearances.

Amen. James' comments highlight an important dilemma related to attention and its increasing influence. In an attention economy where popularity and "interestingness" determine value, a lot of garbage can rise to the top. From an email exchange I had today:

Me: [W]hat is up with the Jackass-ification of the world? [In response to yet another YouTube vid of kids using themselves as crash-test dummies.]

My Correspondent:I wonder if it has anything to do with attention? ;) The guys behind Jackass are a case study in turning attention into cash.

True. And sad. But just because I firmly believe that Goldhaber's right doesn't mean I believe we're headed inevitably for a world run by Johnny Knoxville (although, really, could he do much worse?)

The underlying problem is that our current systems for measuring attention are still far too crude and unsophisticated, subsuming individual attention data into measures of mass popularity.

We need better systems that will give us a lens not simply on what's popular with the world at large, but on what's meaningful to the individuals and communities that matter to us. I don't give a shit about the Technorati 100, either. But I'd like to see the James Governor 100.

Thanks to Alex Barnett for the link.

tags: attention attentiontrust attention+economy attention+data james+governor youtube alex+barnett respect