An important, developing part of the online world that you should know about is what’s being called “attention.” It’s related to what you’d probably intuitively associate with the word. Attention-minded folks discuss the future of our “attention data.” Examples include:

• Your click-stream, or web browsing history
• Your bookmarks
• Your online purchases
• Your content posted and consumed (which podcasts have you listened to, how long did you spend on this blog, the tags you’ve applied to your photos online)

There’s a great potential for evil here – I don’t want the government watching where I go online (already being done to some folks, I’m sure), and I don’t want this data of mine to be controlled by some company that won’t let me grab it, use it or move it over into another company’s database. There’s a great potential for good in this data too, though. I would really like to know how I discovered all the web pages in my archive (the referring URLs) and I’d like to know how readers use the articles I post here on this blog (have you emailed this to someone else? Do you click on the links in my sidebar?). Much of that is already available, but the attention folks are working to make it more solid, easily accessed and usable.

Towards these ends, a great group called The Attention Trust is working to make sure that our interests as end users are protected. One of their projects is The Attention Trust Wiki. On that wiki (a web site that anyone can edit, like Wikipedia) I’ve started pages for an attention wishlist and a list of places you can read more. Check out the attention trust and their wiki. This is going to be very important stuff that you’ll hear about a lot in the coming years.

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