Attention used to live inside centralized containers. Print. Television. Radio.

These were the only tenants of the attention economy.

They owned the audience.

Then personal computers arrived. The internet followed. The container cracked.

Now attention flows through thousands of scattered pipes, not a few locked channels.

The old monolith of attention has broken into a million streams.

Each stream is picked up by ghosts of past and micro-creators, the new aggregators across the web.

In the past, only the central tenants earned from attention.

Now, the new aggregators collect the scattered flow and get paid.

It’s a lot like the liberalization of India in the 1990s.

Before that, the government was the only player. A central force.

Post-liberalization, the gates opened. Tiny private players emerged.

They became the new aggregators of demand.

And the ones who did it well became rich.

It’s the same with attention now.

What was once held in a tight, central vessel is now everywhere.

Those who gather and redirect it are the new winners.

In the moments of such restructuring rises an opportunity to be an aggregator.

The fall of the dragon and the scavenging of its scales.