Wealth & Money Quote by Herbert Simon

Herbert Simon, a Nobel-winning economist and cognitive scientist, reframed information as something that uses up a scarce resource: human attention. The more information available, the more thinly attention is spread, so the limiting factor in understanding and decision-making is not access to data but the capacity to focus on what matters. The paradox is that abundance can impoverish, because the bottleneck shifts from supply of facts to the allocation of notice.

Simon developed the idea in the era of mass media and bureaucracies, alongside his theory of bounded rationality and the practice of satisficing. People and organizations do not optimize across limitless options; they cope by filtering, prioritizing, and settling for good-enough choices. That coping strategy turns into a central design problem when information is cheap and ubiquitous. What tools, norms, and institutions help us spend attention wisely?

The digital age amplifies his point. News feeds, notifications, and recommendation engines compete for the same finite mental budget. Business models that monetize attention have evolved powerful techniques to capture it, often favoring novelty, outrage, or stickiness over relevance. More channels and data streams do not automatically lead to better decisions; without effective filters, they heighten noise, increase decision fatigue, and crowd out reflection.

Efficient allocation of attention is not only a personal tactic but an economic and civic question. Editorial judgment, curation, and reputation systems become scarce services. Metrics shape outcomes: when clicks stand in for value, attention drifts toward the sensational; when goals are defined more carefully, design can support focus, intention, and depth. Friction can be a feature, not a bug, when it protects concentration. Education in media literacy, humane defaults in software, and institutional checks on manipulative design all follow from Simons insight.

The enduring lesson is practical: treat attention as a budget. Invest it where it compounds knowledge and action, and build environments that help rather than hijack that investment.