Pat Kane reviewed Richard Lanham’s The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information in the Independent today. “If there’s one thing the internet has not brought about, contrary to all prediction,” says Kane, “it’s the destruction of literature.”
The book springboards from the insight that “our true scarcity is attention, not culture.” Lanham “is as deeply immersed in arts and letters as he is in bytes and chips” and “his welcoming attitude towards electronic media comes from his long perspective.” Kane notes that “it’s refreshing to read a deeply literary mind who embraces the information age, and wants to focus on its civilising possibilities rather than flee from the screens in horror.”
We also have an interview with Lanham and an excerpt from the book.