Pete Cashmore Quotes

I am aware, as everybody has to be, that there's more competition for one's attention nowadays.

The conditions conducive to deep thought have become increasingly rare in our highly mediated lives... Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is 'eyeballs.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of life as the mass production of automobiles.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

HOBBES: All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.

Multimedia? As far as I'm concerned, it's reading with the radio on!

America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.

When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.

The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it.

We're living at a time when attention is the new currency.

Mass attention is almost unattainable and it's not clear that you want it.

I'm not suggesting that the entire nation can't be successful, but there's something to it when you have 150 cable channels and the Internet at your fingertips and video games and all kinds of ADD-addled devices like my iPhone and your BlackBerry and things that keep us busy.

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.

Modern life has gotten so strange, we all get 150 emails and text messages a day, and it's hard when things are moving that quickly to keep that sense of wonder about being alive.

I do all my shopping on the Web. I do much of my research online. I have a blog, too. It is definitely a distraction. It is definitely a blessing. What blessing isn't a distraction, though?

I feel like my competition is everything else that's competing for people's attention, not just other print magazines, newspapers and cable. It's your kid's report card and the games you want to play, all the things that compete for people's time.

I often think of it this way: The 21st century is going to be a war on the attention of humanity. Where civilization focuses its attention, I mean, that's what defines what the civilization cares about.

We live in such an age of chatter and distraction. Everything is a challenge for the ears and eyes.

Yahoo is in everything from pets to old people to finance to communications to e-commerce and more, and I really thrive on that.

That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.

Life is so fast these days, and we're exposed to so much information. Television makes us a witness to such misery.

I think we have the attention span of a gnat. You know, with cell phones and Twitter.

The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.