"Rich states are rich because of a process of institutional evolution that has taken place over centuries, even millennia (p69)."
"Markets work because there is never a single voice (p120)."
Kay's work builds nicely upon Jared Diamond's work in GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL, pointing out how certain social innovations ("institutions", above) in advanced markets present advantages over those that have been seen as more "natural"...such as natural resources like oil, timber, iron, water, etc. Just as the availability of those natural resources did not come out of nowhere in an instant, just as the advantages that Diamond points out (like animal husbandry or high quality grains) did not come about overnight, the development of progressive social institutions (including customs) did not come about overnight.
Of course, being a very adaptive type of primate, we can adjust to the presence of these institutions in the flash of a virtual evolutionary instant. For example, it is easy for us to take for granted things such as sliced bread even though sliced bread has only been with us for a few decades. In the space of a century, we can go from a primarily agricultural country to one in which only about 2% of the workers are involved in producing more food than even our obese nation can consume. To adjust to such shifts, it's necessary to allow the functioning of what Peter Drucker calls "creative destruction". While Drucker was not the first devotee of Kali-Durga, we can easily grasp that his take on the matter fits hand-in-glove with the topics of markets and affluence.
Creative destruction (of products and businesses) in markets is as natural as the cycle of birth, death, birth again. The same is true concerning social institutions and customs in cultures--at least in healthy cultures. To understand the cultural aspect of this analogy, it is helpful to think of the phrase "time is money". Time for mortals is finite, and since it is finite, we can assign a comparative value and decide whether we are using time wisely or "wasting" time. We can do the same thing with attention and say that attention is time and money. This becomes more obvious when media outlets are nonstop. By the point where we can watch Jon Stewart knocking MSNBC on the Internet whenever we want, we have adjusted far beyond expecting to find sliced bread available whenever we might want it. I have about 100 channels of television to choose from and seemingly countless websites, chatrooms, and real and simulated web-persons to interact with. I can't pay attention to all of them all the time, and any ad exec or lowly consumer easily recognizes that the more people that are paying attention to YOUR channel, site, or whatever media outlet, the more valuable it is. Attention is money. And my attention is finite.
Who cares? Well, we can ask the question of whether I am using my attention wisely or wasting it. We can take that question back a step, to a further remove, and ask whether the available media outlets in general waste attention and we can debate who is responsible if my attention is wasted. My point is just to show we are familiar with the concept of attention as "money", as measurable or comparable value and as a medium of exchange. It is interesting that the same idea--attention as valuable--also affects us on a profoundly personal level in our relationships. We show status and importance by who we pay attention to--so it is not surprising that, in our society of nonstop media output fame would be such a high-level "commodity". It has taken centuries at least, even millennia if you believe Socrates' comments on writing or take language development itself into consideration, to evolve to this point of media output and our common customs of visiting pornsites and social networking sites more than others. Whether you visit them personally or not, pornsites have become a common institution of the early 21st century and any institution so widely attended to will certainly affect cultural evolution even if we never get to the point where we publicly say, "This is the best thing to happen since free porn". So, cheer with me for Wonder Bread.
Having presented the concept that attention is money along with creative desctruction and evolution, we can now look at innovation as a crossroads.
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