... In addition, a specific unit of a product is often (and in some
contexts must be) identified by a serial number, which is necessary to
distinguish products with the same product definition.
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the
transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature,
personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or
commodities. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun
Appadurai, is "anything intended for exchange," or any object of
economic value.
Commodification is often criticized on the grounds that some things
ought not to be treated as commodities-for example, water, education,
data, information, knowledge, human life, and animal life.
Attention economics is an approach to the management of information
that treats human attention as a scarce commodity and applies economic
theory to solve various information management problems. According to
Matthew Crawford, "Attention is a resource-a person has only so much of
it." Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck add to that definition:
Attention is focused mental engagement on a particular item of
information. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular
item, and then we decide whether to act.
Surveillance capitalism is a concept in political economics which
denotes the widespread collection and commodification of personal data
by corporations. This phenomenon is distinct from government
surveillance, though the two can reinforce each other. The concept of
surveillance capitalism, as described by Shoshana Zuboff, is driven by a
profit-making incentive, and arose as advertising companies, led by
Google's AdWords, saw the possibilities of using personal data to target
consumers more precisely.