[...] with the reduction to zero of the marginal costs for the transmission of digital goods we are in the midst of the emergence of something absolutely novel with profoundly revolutionary implications. But, on the one hand, the costs of production of the material goods necessary for the existence and circulation among us of cultural goods are far from evaporating, remaining ecologically unsustainable at their current levels. While, on the other hand, and above all, when attention phenomena are taken into account, we find competition returning at the time of reception of cultural goods. This was certainly Herbert Simon's central message in 1969:

In an information-rich world, most of the cost of information is the cost incurred by the recipient. [...] Human beings, like contemporary computers, are essentially serial deices. They can attend to only one thing at a time. This is just another way of saying that attention is scarce.