New keynote, attention economy stuff. Think of the world as a MMORPG called "Western Culture". There are three levels, 1) Feudal, 2) something else (Market/Money/Industrial) 3) attention economy. Grr, speaker is good, moves fast, hard to take notes. Level is of game, not of player. Interesting analogy. Going to go pay attention.
How much of this attention economy stuff is really a stage of industry maturity? Hollywood started focusing on stars how long after (not necesarily as time, but as maturity level possibly?) movies got started did the industry being driven by stars emerge? How about corporations and big-name capitalists? I wonder if it is a factor of the industry becoming complex enough that in order to manage it people abstract out totems which become associated with people (stars) or companies (stars) or whatever serves as the focal point of attention for the movement.
When we talk about complex things we need representative entities so they emerge as the field in which the complexity grows hits a point where it is A) sufficiently complex that the majority cannot comprehend it all, and B) enough people care about the field that there is a majority of non-specialists paying attention. Anyway, I will shut up, but I think there is no economic phase shift occuring, but there is certainly a growth in the engineering industry, and possibly the science industry.
Interesting that I use "industry" there. Anyway, time to shut up again, Dyson is starting =)