Attention, Scarcity and Demand

Reading the article 'Information Abundance, Attention Scarcity' I was struck by an interesting idea. The article almost makes it, but I think it bares clarifying and repeating...

The article mentions Fred Wilson's assertion of Abundance that states (and I paraphrase):

"In the old world, product scarcity (along with demand) created value. In the digital world it is actually abundance which creates value (network effects and social software)."

However I would go one step further and say...

If scarcity creates value then the balance of power has shifted.

In the old world products were scarce - this meant that companies who provided product could profit from the demand.

In the digital world, where abundance is key (creating a digital copy costs next to nothing) it is a customer's attention that has become scarce. This means that the customer now holds the value - not the company.

This is an interesting paradigm shift. Something that Seth Goldstein's Root.net and others are trying to capitalize on.