Source: Cointelegraph
Original text: (AI agents and blockchain are redefining the digital economy)
Author: Arunkumar Krishnakumar, Head of Growth at Marinade Finance
The rise of the internet and social media has reshaped the way brands reach billions of users globally. In this meticulously designed digital ecosystem that distracts attention, the competition for user attention has reached a fever pitch—welcome to the age of the attention economy, where engagement metrics are far more important than substantial user experience.
People are bombarded by various notifications, advertisements, and content, which are designed to generate clicks rather than meet real needs. A 2020 study by The Economist Intelligence Unit showed that 28% of knowledge workers' time in the U.S. is consumed by dealing with distractions, and this frantic pursuit of attention has significant economic costs. The pressures of cognitive loss, financial waste, and social costs are giving rise to a new framework centered around user intentions—the intention economy.
The Mechanism of the Attention Economy
Digital platforms capture and retain user attention through dopamine-stimulating mechanisms. Algorithms preferentially recommend addictive content, ensuring users remain engrossed— for example, when searching for "travel insurance" on Google, SEO optimization and paid ads distort results, often leading users to suboptimal choices. Price comparison websites, while seemingly practical, base their rankings on ad bidding rather than true relevance, with efficiency prioritization thoroughly overwhelming accuracy.
The misalignment costs between user intentions and system design are staggering. The aforementioned study estimates that attention distraction causes a productivity loss of $391 billion annually in the U.S. economy.
Cognitive Costs
The attention economy inflicts dual harm on users and creators. For users, the constant bombardment of notifications damages focus, not only reducing work efficiency but also weakening deep thinking abilities. Research from King's College London indicates that 51% of respondents believe technology is harming the attention span of young people.
The Dilemma of Content Creators
Creators are also trapped in a quagmire. They are forced to continuously produce eye-catching content to maintain exposure, which often leads to severe mental exhaustion. To attract traffic, creators have to use clickbait, controversial topics, and other tactics, often sacrificing content quality and depth.
Existing profit models exacerbate industry inequality. Revenue is entirely dependent on engagement metrics preferred by platform algorithms, leading top creators to monopolize the vast majority of traffic dividends.
Post-Network Era and Intention Economy
The post-network era is replacing the attention economy with the intention economy. This paradigm, proposed by Outlier Ventures, achieves super-contextual value interactions through intention-driven AI agents. Its core is to replace quantity with quality, reconstructing digital infrastructure to center user intentions and delegate complex tasks to autonomous agents.
Taking the aforementioned insurance scenario as an example, AI agents in the intention economy can comprehensively compare multi-dimensional indicators such as policy coverage, user preferences, and real-time weather. This automated process reduces the user's cognitive load while ensuring optimal decision-making.
User-Centric Design Practices
Shifting to the intention economy requires reconstructing design logic. The post-network infrastructure allows AI agents to act on behalf of users and integrates distributed ledger technology (DLT) to ensure trustworthy verification. Its essence is intention-oriented and deterministic, while also possessing adaptability, verifiability, and super-contextual characteristics.
In the post-network era, user interaction is guided by AI agents capable of interpreting complex intentions, eliminating repetitive manual operations. DLT technology ensures the security and transparency of interactions. The integration of AI and blockchain will unlock new dimensions of efficiency, making the intention economy inevitable.
The Key Role of AI
AI drives the realization of the intention economy through personalized interaction and decision optimization. In the post-network era, AI agents can dynamically adjust their behavior based on real-time data to accurately match user needs.
This personalization requires strong privacy protection. The post-network era ensures user sovereignty through privacy computing technology and decentralized frameworks.
Challenges and Breakthroughs
The implementation of the intention economy faces threefold challenges: balancing personalization and privacy, ethical considerations in AI, and restructuring the attention profit model. This requires collaboration among technology providers, policymakers, and users.
Despite criticisms that AI systems may undermine human agency, the intention architecture of the post-network ensures that agents are merely extensions of user will. This intricate design preserves human autonomy while eliminating cognitive friction and economic distortions of the attention economy.
The intention-driven architecture of the post-network directly addresses the fundamental flaws of the current predatory model, enabling digital systems to genuinely serve user needs and build a healthier and more efficient ecosystem.
Author: Arunkumar Krishnakumar, Head of Growth at Marinade Finance
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent the official views of Cointelegraph.
