ORBIT: The attention-economy thesis

Status: draft v0.3 — ORBIT placeholder content.

This post is an ORBIT-tagged mock for the "unfinished dissertations" section. Replace with real draft.

The core claim

Human attention, not compute or capital, is the binding constraint on productive output in 2026.

I don't fully believe this yet. That's why it's a draft.

Argument structure

1. Premise A: Compute is effectively free at the margin.
2. Premise B: Capital follows attention.
3. Premise C: Attention is fixed (per person) and degrading (per year).
4. Therefore: The margin of production has shifted from what can be built to what can be noticed.

Weak points (help me here)

• Premise C is the shakiest. Is attention actually degrading, or just redistributing?
• This may collapse into a restatement of Goodhart's law in disguise.

Where I want to take it

I want to connect this to software design decisions — specifically, why the best tools increasingly feel like they reduce surface area rather than expand it.

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ORBIT discussion: open. Sign in to comment. Feedback on the weak points above is especially welcome.