From Attention to Agency

DMDiagnostic Paper

Diagnosticstests the theory against one real system

SSRNpublished record

5topics

The internet’s pathologies—misinformation, polarisation, platform concentration—arise from a deeper architectural constraint.

The long-form argument for this work still lives on the existing explainer at /case-studies/diagnoses/internet. This page carries the abstract and the corpus metadata — the frame the argument would move into unchanged.

Key termsAttention Economy · Proxy Monetisation · Meaning Systems · Digital Settlement · AI Agency

In the canonprobetests the theory against one real system

The paperFrom Attention to Agency: A Structural Failure of Digital Markets — read it on SSRN →

Also on this page

One explainer, more than one work

Five explainers in the corpus cover more than one paper. This is one of them — the argument is shared, the papers are not.

Compensatory ArchitectureIEDiagnostic Note→

Nearby in the corpus

Also in Diagnostics

The works either side of this one in the canon order — what it builds on and what builds on it.

Beyond AllocationFODiagnostic Note→Formalising Value Without InstitutionsNFTDiagnostic Note→Why Institutions ForgetWIFTemporal Architecture→

Where to go next

Three directions out

Where to go once you have the argument — the paper it comes from, the instrument that measures it, or the next thing it depends on.

Measure itinstrumentsRun the measurement this argument implies against your own institution.→The library65 worksEvery work, by layer, with the argument and the paper side by side.→In the field2 liveWhere the argument has met real money and published dates.→