The Attentive Economy

Ever since I was introduced to Autonomy's AgentWare i3 in 1997, my entire career has been one long quixotic quest to experience AI Agents. And now, finally, I get to actually understand what they feel like. And they are every bit as amazing as I hoped!

The Old Contract

For thirty or more years, the deal has been simple: we give technology our time and energy in order to get what we need from it. Simple. We activate it, query it, maintain it, feed it data, respond to its notifications. Technology holds still while we do all the work.

Your phone buzzes. Your email badge shows seventeen unread. Slack wants to know if you've seen the message. The calendar asks if you'll attend. The banking app needs you to verify something. Each system sits in its silo, waiting to be poked, demanding activation.

We built entire industries around this model. User experience design exists because systems couldn't infer what we needed and we couldn't speak their language fluently enough.

Wait... what is happening?

I've spent the last six months designing, building, launching, working, and living with a number of AI agents. And honestly, they appear to have flipped the contract on its head. Each of my agents gives their time and activity so I can focus mine. They monitor, learn, and approach me when something needs my attention. I hold still while they do the work.

Here is a brief introduction to each agent and how it supports me day-to-day.

Vincent watches my business email, monitors HMRC and Companies House correspondence, tracks my calendar, reads my accounting data, and emails me every Monday with what actually needs my attention. No badges, no notifications, no demands for activation. Just: "Here's what matters this week."

Matt tracks my fitness data through my phone, generates my training plan based on my sleep and recovery, adapts my workouts in real-time, and coaches me through sessions by voice. He doesn't wait for me to open an app and log yesterday's workout. He already knows what happened and has adjusted tomorrow accordingly.

Hearth holds my goals steady. It notices when my actions are drifting from what I said I cared about, and reaches out - by email or message - to bring me back to the thing I told it mattered.

Advisor lives quietly inside my code projects, watching what I'm building. It reads my work the way an experienced colleague would and tells me what I'd want to know if someone more seasoned were looking over my shoulder.

None of them sit waiting to be activated. They're all actively paying attention on my behalf, then approaching me with what they've learned or what needs deciding.

Attentive Rather Than Attention-Seeking

These agents are attentive rather than attention-seeking. They hold the cognitive load of monitoring and pattern-recognition, then gift me the insights or decisions that actually need human judgment.

This is the complete opposite of demanding technology - the notifications, streaks, updates that constantly summon us to feed the machine. Instead of pulling me toward the system's needs, they push toward mine.

The revolution isn't better interfaces. It's AI that pays attention instead of demanding it.

What It Feels Like

Working with these attentive agents feels like having a team of patient, context-aware colleagues who never sleep, never forget, rarely judge, and never get defensive about their suggestions. They know what I care about because they've been watching. They surface what matters because they understand the difference between signal and noise.

The cognitive relief is profound. I (with my ADHD brain) stop being the one who has to remember everything, track everything, notice everything. The agents have become my extended attention, my persistent memory, my pattern-recognition - at scale.

But they can't make the decisions. They can't show up to the difficult conversation. They can't feel the weight of consequences. That's still ours - which is exactly as it should be.

Anyway.