Take it, run with it, have fun, ask no questions. That got you a printed book with lots of details, and I'd talk to you on the phone. Finally, for reasonably serious money, I'd make you a customized version. Then you got pretty good support. Attention is the generation of personalized information.
Communication is the medium in which attention grows.
While it's possible to get around the expense of dealing with authors or their representatives or other authorities, the benefit devalues rapidly the further you get from the source. And his elegant proposal that attention is a kind of medium fits succinctly with my theory that protection will move to the relationship between provider and market. This is already the case with billions of dollars worth of intellectual property sold by lawyers, architects, and other professionals to their clients. It's hardly useful for an architect to copyright her plans for your house. Mr. Barlow, I just read and enjoyed your Wired piece and was thinking that your analysis, while IMHO it is absolutely dead on, suffers from one debilitating metaphor.