More and more realize how much money is a recent invention. Have actually talked MY musings on how money gets introduced into the global system and is not intuitive. I focus on collateralized bank loans as needed or cannot get it done. If that is wrong, then, oh well. Makes sense to me.
If true though, modern money is an invention of the 20th century, which kind of makes it interesting to consider what was around before, which is a fun subject. But in essence money was directly backed by SOMETHING, like gold, while in our times...well I've talked money lots.
Attention from your fellow humans though is as old as humanity.
There has been an attention industry though which also arrived relatively recently when consider span of human civilization. That money-making attention industry found that people could be convinced to buy things when shown advertising along with other desired content. Idea was that enough people would buy something to pay for the distribution of the information with capital intensive means.
Advertising is being re-engineered by web reality.
On the web there is a vast global infrastructure which costs quite a bit actually, where human beings paid upfront the costs of the distribution system, which allows people like me to get free distribution of information across it. There is a cost there but am not having to pay it, despite having readers all over the globe.
So consider, in prior systems, people paid the distributors of content other humans valued, in order for that information to flow, but in our times that is unnecessary for the web. You STILL have to pay quite a bit to distribute through other systems but is a legacy situation.
Like, if I'm interested in learning something new for lots of reasons where can all be personal am more likely to get needed information NOW with a web search than by any other means. Even if that subject is talked on some other legacy medium, is unlikely to be convenient to me. Like I may notice when is scheduled, or is subject of an upcoming edition of something or other.
And people paying for that distribution on legacy systems?
Are more and more likely looking at an audience which either doesn't know better, is just doing things out of habit, or maybe does prefer the couch potato reality, of sitting back and letting others decide. Or maybe something else. Who knows. Who cares really if you've shifted primarily to web focus as I have.
But yeah then is a question of what pays for directing attention on the web? Am thinking, nothing. More and more do not think you can direct attention on the web much.
And advertising models are still evolving. But yeah, even if you DO find yourself moved by an ad or something promotional on the web, your buying power does NOT pay for the cost of distribution.
So on the web people must be paying for cost of content, which was shouldered by others in legacy industries.
Like now streaming services for video, are increasingly producing their own content.
Yeah that makes sense. So web shifts payment from paying for distribution with capital intensive means, to needing to pay for content, while actually there are still distribution costs.
Like with video streaming there is the cost of the streaming which at those scales does show up, as well as the infrastructure needed to stream to millions, and lots of figuring out how to recommend best. Still those are negligible as a percentage of costs per person compared to the primary costs in legacy industries for distribution of content.
With streaming video on the web can get a better handle on cost of content. And we DID pay lots extra for the delivery of content. Now more focus is on paying for the content direct.
Then you get to people like me who like to put up content, where cost of a global infrastructure is being born by HUGE corporations like here Google is the primary, which is also a part of Alphabet.
Presumably Google has some gain from Blogger and letting people like me talk about a variety of subjects, without being charged.
While am comforting myself that getting global attention does not necessarily connect to money in and of itself. Still is not an easy thing to do.
With a better handle on how I do it, which has taken quite a few years to learn, am also learning how others do it.
And reality is: not many people can pull global attention with ANYTHING that they do, consistently, year after year after year.
For me though is easier than not with skills now developed, as I like writing posts like this one. Is fun.
James Harris
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