In the subtitle of his 2025 book, The Siren’s Call, Chris Hayes refers to attention as ‘the world’s most endangered resource’. His core message is that information is abundant nowadays.

Information is the opposite of a scarce resource: it is everywhere and there is always more of it. It is generative. It is copyable. Multiple entities can have the same information. […] But if someone has your attention, you know it. It can’t be in multiple places at once, the way information can. […]

[T]he axiom I want to drive home is that information is infinite and attention is limited. And value derives from scarcity, which is why attention is so valuable.

Hayes, C. (2025). The siren’s call: How attention became the world’s most endangered resource. Penguin Press, pp. 13 f.

The challenge, therefore, is to determine what truly deserves our attention amidst the overwhelming deluge of information.

This is particularly relevant for academic research. Information specialists and academic libraries can provide crucial support to researchers in helping them to navigate these floods of information.