Signals Over Substance: Navigating the Attention Economy
In a recent article (see link in the comments below), I revisited a framework I developed more than a decade ago while writing Flat World Navigation, Collaboration and Networking. At the time, I was trying to make sense of what felt like a shifting economic landscape, and I described it through what I called the Digital, Attention and Collaboration Economies, or the DACE. Digital infrastructure was becoming the environment in which economic activity operated, attention was emerging as the scarce resource shaping visibility and influence, and collaboration was becoming the mechanism through which value was created across increasingly global networks.
Looking back now, the framework still holds. Digital infrastructure has expanded dramatically, connecting individuals and organisations across the world in ways that would have been difficult to imagine even twenty years ago. But the balance between those three forces has shifted. Attention, in particular, has become far more powerful than many of us anticipated. It no longer just shapes visibility, it increasingly shapes the incentives of the platforms themselves.
To understand what that means in practice, it’s worth looking at how attention is actually being optimised. Much of the modern internet is structured around capturing and retaining human focus. Algorithms prioritise content based on engagement signals, feeds are designed to keep us interacting, and metrics like impressions, reach and engagement have become proxies for influence. These systems are incredibly effective at amplifying information, but they also quietly shape how that information is produced and shared.
When Attention Becomes the Incentive
When attention becomes the dominant economic incentive, signals that travel well tend to outperform those that are accurate, nuanced or harder to compress. Complex ideas struggle against the speed of online discourse, and context is often the first casualty as ideas are reduced to fragments that move quickly. Over time, this begins to reshape the information environment itself, rewarding narrative and perception alongside, and sometimes ahead of, substance.
Yes, the ‘sizzle’ is sexy, but the substance is where the nutrition sits.
This is where Om Malik’s idea of Neo Symbolic Capitalism becomes particularly useful. He’s pointing to something many of us have felt but perhaps not quite named, that narrative, perception and signalling are increasingly carrying real weight in the technology economy. In an attention-driven environment, that’s not especially surprising. The things that get seen are the things that spread, and the things that spread start to shape what we value.
Seen through the lens of DACE, this creates a tension that feels increasingly familiar. Attention has become the dominant force within digital systems, yet collaboration is still how meaningful value actually gets created. The difficulty is that the incentives of attention don’t always support the conditions collaboration needs to thrive.
Where the Tension Starts to Show
Collaboration relies on trust, shared context and a degree of patience. It requires people to exchange information openly, to test ideas, and to rely on one another over time. Attention-driven environments tend to reward something quite different: visibility, speed and strong signalling. That can leave people in the slightly odd position of trying to collaborate while also competing for attention within the same system. It’s subtle, but it creates friction, and over time that friction adds up.
There are also very real implications here for cybersecurity and trust and safety. Systems that are optimised for attention can accelerate the spread of misinformation, manipulation and reputational damage simply because those signals move well. At the same time, the underlying data environments have become increasingly attractive targets, whether through data harvesting, surveillance, or more coordinated attempts to shape narratives at scale. When trust starts to erode in those environments, collaboration doesn’t just become harder, it becomes riskier.
We’ve seen plenty of examples of this over the past decade. Organisations struggling to maintain the integrity of information in fast-moving environments. Individuals trying to make sense of what to rely on and what to question. Regulators stepping into spaces that were never originally designed with governance in mind.
What’s Missing
What becomes clear, fairly quickly, is that attention on its own doesn’t sustain a healthy digital ecosystem. Digital infrastructure connects us, and attention amplifies us, but collaboration requires something more stable underneath. It requires systems that preserve trust, accountability and safety.
From a technology perspective, that shifts cybersecurity, governance and trust and safety much closer to the centre than they used to be. These are no longer background considerations; they are part of the conditions that make collaboration possible in the first place.
In practical terms, this suggests that the next phase may be less about building things that capture attention and more about creating environments that preserve trust. Organisations need ways to protect sensitive data, maintain integrity, and collaborate with confidence across networks. Without that, the signals that dominate the attention economy risk overwhelming the structures that actually create value.
Currency vs Gold Standard
The flattened world that Thomas Friedman described did emerge, and the networked environment captured by DACE is very much the one we’re operating in today. But living inside that system has revealed something that wasn’t as visible a decade ago. Attention may be the currency of the internet, but trust is the gold standard that allows collaboration to survive within it.
Navigating this environment now requires more than understanding networks or mastering communication channels. It requires understanding how attention flows, how incentives shape behaviour, and how governance and cybersecurity can stabilise the systems we rely on.
Signals will always shape visibility and influence. The challenge is making sure they don’t overwhelm the substance that meaningful collaboration depends on. Because if we lose that, we don’t just lose trust, we lose the ability to work together at all.
About the Author
Kim Chandler McDonald is the Co-Founder and CEO of 3 Steps Data, driving data/digital governance solutions.
She is the Global VP of CyAN, an award-winning author, storyteller, and advocate for cybersecurity, digital sovereignty, compliance, governance, and end-user empowerment.