When attention became currency

The roots of our modern attention crisis don't lie in Silicon Valley. They lie in a dusty New York printing press from 1833.

I discovered this while researching the history of information consumption. Benjamin Day, a young publisher in New York, made a decision that would shape how billions of people consume information: he dropped the price of his newspaper to one penny.

Imagine if Netflix suddenly cost a nickel. The entire media landscape would transform overnight. That's what happened in 1833.

Before Day's New York Sun, newspapers cost six cents – about two dollars today. They targeted merchants, focused on trade, and published sporadically. Day's penny press destroyed this model. In doing so, he invented something more valuable than newspapers: he created the first mass audience.

Day wasn't selling newspapers. He was selling attention.

The pattern should sound familiar. Make the product free. Build a massive audience. Sell that audience's attention to advertisers. It's the same model that powers most of the internet today.

The penny press also pioneered the mechanics of modern social media:

• Continuous updates (Twitter feeds)
• Attention selling (ad networks)
• Push notifications (newsboys shouting headlines)
• Viral content (sensational stories meant to be shared)

By 1835, critics warned about information addiction and declining attention spans. They saw the blurring lines between important news and trivial entertainment. These warnings could have been written today.

Working with startups has taught me these patterns aren't accidental. The penny press reveals our struggles with information overload aren't new – they're rooted in business models that optimize for engagement over enrichment.

This history holds both warning and hope. Society eventually developed better ways to consume information. People learned to be selective, to value quality over quantity, to find balance.

We're not doomed to endless distraction. Just as readers in the 1830s learned to navigate the flood of penny papers, we can develop healthier relationships with digital media. I've found my own balance splitting time between screens and nature, between building digital tools and experiencing life offline.

The real insight isn't that history repeats – it's that humans adapt. We've overcome information revolutions before. We can do it again.