The Yun Family Foundation Introduces "Attention Inequality Coefficient" as a Measure of Attention Inequality in the Attention Economy
It brings new meaning to the phrase Attention Deficit Disorder, and it's probably the fastest growing social condition in the world.
SAN MATEO, Calif., Dec. 24, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Yun Family Foundation (the "Foundation") introduces "Attention Inequality Coefficient" (Yun Coefficient) as a category of quantitative methods to measure attention inequality. In the attention economy, attention is wealth and vice versa. The Foundation challenges leaders of social, economic, and political institutions around the world to help launch a new field to measure, study, and address the rapidly growing attention inequality among humanity.
"While the topic of rising wealth inequality has been getting a lot of attention, another area of rising disparity has gotten far less mention: attention inequality," stated Eric Yun, a Principal of the Foundation. "Take the Gini coefficient, which is a measure of wealth inequality, and replace wealth with a measure of attention: followers, views, citations, likes, etc. Not that they need any more attention, but it could also be called the "Kardashian Coefficient" since they epitomize the idea of being famous for being famous."
The Foundation will be hosting convenings in 2020 among scientists and leaders to bring greater awareness to attention inequality and to promote scholarship in attention inequality as a topic.
"Attention and wealth feed on each other in a self-reinforcing feedback loop," stated Conrad Yun, Executive Director of the Foundation. "For most of human evolution, the gulf between the most attention-getting and the least attention-getting members of a tribe was limited by the size of the tribe. Even the most attention-seeking among us probably had no more than a couple hundred face-to-face followers. As mass media emerged, however, that gap widened, ushering an era of celebrity monoculture."
The topic is among the new topics introduced in the Foundation's publication, "Essays on Inclusive Stakeholding," which was published on November 6, 2019.
"Furthermore, the advent of the Internet fundamentally disrupted the attention economy by giving billions of people their own media platforms," said Jeremy Yun, a Principal of the Foundation. "No longer can elite celebrities sustain a disproportionate amount of attention like the Beatles could do during the halcyon days of monoculture. Sustained worship of monoculture celebrities has been replaced by a continuous rotation of attention from one short-lived celebrity to another. Today, the attention economy at the top has become a continuously competitive race to the bottom with fewer celebrities than ever commanding mass attention for any period of significance."
The Foundation aims to address the epidemic of loneliness and alienation that is spreading around the world in the technology age.
"As a result of this race-to-the-bottom baiting for your attention, vast numbers of people are receiving almost no attention from others," added Eric Yun. "There is probably a minimum amount of attention that everyone needs to feel human. If you draw the Attention Poverty Line there, then the number of people starving for attention is exploding. While loneliness is hard to measure, what can be quantified is attention deficit. It brings new meaning to the phrase Attention Deficit Disorder, and it's probably the fastest growing social condition in the world."
For additional information, visit the Yun Family Foundation website.
http://www.yunfamilyfoundation.org/
SOURCE Yun Family Foundation
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