The Two Markets

Abstract

If we live in an attention economy, where it is not information that is in short supply but the human attention needed to make sense of it—and we do; if librarians have always played a central role in organizing this attention—and you have; then why is it that Google seems to be eating your lunch? One way to frame this question is to discriminate more clearly than we usually do between the two markets: the free market of stuff and the free market of ideas.