I have been thinking about a shift that may prove more important than another change in the tools we use to produce content.
For years, much of the digital world has operated according to a familiar principle:
Capture attention first. Find a way to monetize it later.
More content. More advertising. More impressions. More opportunities to appear in someone’s feed, inbox, screen, or daily routine.
The logic was straightforward. Attention was limited, so the ability to capture it was valuable.
That logic has not disappeared.
But I suspect it is becoming insufficient.
We may be moving toward an environment in which trust matters more than the ability to attract attention in the first place.
What happens when content is no longer scarce?
Generative AI changes the economics of producing almost every kind of digital material.
Text, images, video, voice, explanations, presentations, variations of existing ideas — things that once required substantial time and specialized effort can increasingly be produced with far less friction.
And this is only the beginning.
The immediate consequence is an extraordinary increase in the supply of content.
But the deeper consequence is a change in what content itself is worth.
Even before AI, much of what we consumed was not the expression of genuinely new ideas.
Books, articles, presentations, and videos often reorganized familiar concepts, combined existing knowledge, or repackaged established arguments for a different audience.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Interpretation and synthesis can be valuable forms of intellectual work.
But generative systems make that process easier to reproduce at scale.
A provocative way to put it would be this:
It was not the electronic book that fundamentally challenged the value of the book.
It was the possibility of generating endless book-like text on demand.
That does not mean books are dead.
It means that the mere existence of a polished text is becoming a weaker signal of intellectual value.
A book still matters when it offers genuine insight, lived understanding, careful research, or a perspective worth spending time with.
What changes is how easily its surface can be imitated.
The same applies to video, images, and almost every other form of digital expression.
The new problem is not finding something to consume
When content is abundant, availability stops being the central problem.
Instead, the question becomes:
Which of these things deserves my trust?
Who produced it?
What do they know?
What are they trying to achieve?
Can I examine the reasoning behind what they are saying?
Will they take responsibility when they are wrong?
These questions are not new.
But they become more urgent when convincing presentation is increasingly inexpensive.
A polished image is no longer strong evidence that something happened.
A confident explanation is not proof that the underlying reasoning is sound.
A professional-looking website is not, by itself, a reliable indicator of competence.
Presentation can still help us understand a message.
It simply tells us less about whether that message deserves belief.
The source becomes more important
I see signs of this in very ordinary situations.
An email from a named person can feel more meaningful than an anonymous message from an institution.
A dish associated with a particular chef carries a different expectation from an otherwise identical item on a menu.
A product connected to a recognizable maker can mean more than the same product presented by a faceless brand.
These are small examples of a broader pattern.
We increasingly want to understand who stands behind what we consume.
Not just the message, but the person responsible for it.
Not just the product, but the judgment that shaped it.
Not just the brand, but the reputation it has earned.
Of course, attaching a person’s name or photograph to something is not enough. Personal branding can be manufactured just as easily as corporate branding.
The important question is whether there is a real, consistent, accountable source behind the presentation.
Trust cannot simply be designed into an interface.
It has to be earned through behavior.
From visibility to credibility
This is why I am interested in the idea of a trust economy.
I do not mean that the attention economy will disappear.
We will still need to discover new people, products, ideas, and institutions. Visibility will continue to matter.
But visibility and credibility are not the same thing.
The ability to attract attention may become easier to imitate.
The ability to sustain justified trust over time may become comparatively more valuable.
That changes the questions organizations and individuals need to ask.
Instead of only asking how to reach more people, we may need to ask what would make the right people confident enough to rely on us.
Instead of treating every interaction as a conversion opportunity, we may need to understand how those interactions accumulate into a reputation.
And instead of measuring only impressions, clicks, and engagement, we may need better ways to understand reliability, consistency, and responsibility.
Trust is a system, not a feeling
The questions I want to explore next are practical as much as philosophical.
What actually creates trust?
How is it tested?
Which signals are meaningful, and which are merely convincing?
How does trust turn into economic value?
And how can it be preserved in a world where imitation, exaggeration, and fabrication are becoming cheaper?
I suspect trust will become one of the defining design problems of the coming years.
Not because we will suddenly stop paying attention.
But because, in a world where almost anything can be made to look credible, we will need better ways to decide what actually is.
The question will no longer be only:
How do I make people notice?
It will increasingly become:
Why should anyone believe me?
Filed underAttention
