About

About AttentionTrust

Our Principles

Our Mission

Board of Directors

Fiscal Sponsorship and Finances

Privacy Policy

Our Principles

When you pay attention to something (and when you ignore something), data is created. This "attention data" is a valuable resource that reflects your interests, your activities and your values, and it serves as a proxy for your attention.

AttentionTrust and our members believe that you have the following rights:

1. Property

   You own your attention and can store it wherever you wish. You have CONTROL.

2. Mobility

   You can securely move your attention wherever you want whenever you want to. You have the ability to TRANSFER your attention.

3. Economy

   You can pay attention to whomever you wish and receive value in return. Your attention has WORTH.

4. Transparency

   You can see exactly how your attention is being used. You can DECIDE who you trust.

When you give your attention to any entity that's an AttentionTrust member, these rights are guaranteed.

Our Mission

1. Empower people to exert greater control over their "attention data," i.e. any records reflecting what they have paid attention to and what they have ignored. We accomplish this by promoting the principles of user control, by distributing our Attention Recorder, and by supporting the development of other appropriate tools, standards and practices.


2. Educate people about the value of their attention and the importance of attention data.


3. Build a community of individuals and organizations that will guarantee users' rights to own, move, and exchange their attention data, in a transparent environment that gives users the freedom to decide how their data will be used.

Board of Directors

Hank Barry, Secretary
Nick Bradbury
Dick Costolo
Seth Goldstein, Chairperson
Mary Hodder, Chairperson, Advisory Council
Clay Shirky

Emeritus: Steve Gillmor, Co-Founder

Fiscal Sponsorship and Finances

AttentionTrust.org is a non-profit organization that is in the process of obtaining its 501(c)(3) designation from the I.R.S. While we work toward becoming an independent organization, we are operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the San Francisco Foundation.

Contributions will be accepted from both corporations and individuals. We're in the process of setting up the infrastructure to solicit and receive donations, and more information will be available shortly.

All financial statements of the organization will be posted on the organization's web site.

Privacy Policy

AttentionTrust takes your privacy seriously, and we invite you to review our Privacy Policy.