[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[Timothy O'Neill Dang]

Timothy O'Neill Dang wrote:
> 
> Marian Griffith wrote:
> > Do not forget Dr.Cat's ideas about 'attention' being the ultimate gain on
> > any mud.
> 
> I'm looking for some references on this.

I found a bit of the references I was seeking. If I manage to get deeper
into this, I'll fill in relevant details, but thought I would send
enough that any of you can persue it.

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention
of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the
overabundance of information sources that might consume it."
    - Herbert Simon

Herbert Simon is at Carnegie Mellon, has long studied organizational
behavior, individual and organizational decision making, and AI. He won
the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 for his work on organizational
decision making. He's also largely responsible for ideas of "bounded
rationality".

His CMU page including bibliography is at:
http://www.psy.cmu.edu/psy/faculty/hsimon/hsimon.html

So, Simon is talking about a somewhat different angle of attention than
Dr. Cat. Simon is concerned that we have economic mechanisms for
allocating material to its best use, and possibly labor to its best use,
but do we have mechanisms to allocate attention to its best use?

------------------------------
Timothy O'Neill Dang/Cretog8
timothy at nmia.com
H: 505-843-6966
W: 505-244-8803
One monkey don't stop no show



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