Bruce Sterling Names the Elephant

Bruce Sterling sees attention as one facet of a large and complex phenomenon. From his Wired blog today:

Like Jeff Howe, I also believe that "crowdsourcing" is indeed a useful neologism. That's because "crowdsourcing" names part of the same elephant as "Long Tail," "Invisible Tail," "collective intelligence," "folksonomy," "search and publish/publish and search," "attention economy," "collaborative web filters," "architecture of participation" and "commons-based peer-production," among other such. New terminology is boiling out of this realm of activity practically every day now. It is being created because there is a pressing and demonstrable need for it.

So what's the common thread across Bruce's list of buzzwords? Lots of people, all pursuing their own interests and agendas, but connected through a series of explicit and implicit networks, and expressing themselves through a series of explicit and implicit gestures. Very (small-d) democratic.

tags: attention attentiontrust attention+economy bruce sterling wired