The opportunity I see (not the only one) in the attention portion of the cognitive economy, resides in the creation of applications that reduce the amount of attention we have to spend doing meaningless or redundant stuff. If you run a business think about how much time a customer has to spend to complete a transaction with your company. Here is an example:
When you open a bank account why doesn’t the bank identify your preferred language on your ATM card. Better yet, the bank could set your default language based on the language you selected in the first 5 transactions. A simple attention efficiency.
The opportunities are endless and range from simple to infinitely complex. In complex and competitive markets attention efficiencies are powerful differentiators. Companies continue to think about the relationships with their customers in very traditional terms. The future is building systems and applications that allow customer to exchange information in return for future attention. Think of attention as currency, it’s always great when we get more for less money.
Tom The Architect 
Here’s some attention that I want.
-Why does the doctor’s office ALWAYS have to photocopy my insureance card at each visit?
-Why does the person checking me in at the doctor always ask who I am seeing?
-When I get the recorded appointment reminder why does it say (first voice) "On Wednesday, July 12, (second voice) Tony (first voice) has an appointment with (second voice) his health care professional (first voice) at 10am." Did the person who did voice 1 suddenly die? And look! They still don’t know who I am seeing.
OMG So I had the appointment.
How’s this for attention? Suddenly, after 4 visits, my birthday does not match the one on file with the insurance company. I guess I need to have a talk with my mother. It seems that she lied to me about my birthday. She always plays tricks like that. The best was when I was 4 and she told me quite deadpan that she was a vampire.