From Algorithms to Archetypes: How the Attention Economy Shapes the New Language of Meaning

In a world where algorithms curate what we see and value, semiotics helps us decode how meaning itself is being automated.

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A few weeks ago, I conducted an online Semiofest session on Narrative Semiotics, featuring speakers Sarah Dodge from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Laura Jordan Bambach from Uncharted Agency.

If you're interested, here is the video of the session.

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🌍 Introduction: The Algorithm as Storyteller

The age of information promised empowerment, but what we have instead is orchestration. Algorithms now structure what enters our awareness, what disappears, and what feels meaningful. They shape how we perceive ourselves, how we connect, and how culture evolves.

At first glance, this may seem like a technological shift. But in truth, it’s a semiotic one.

Algorithms do not create content; they create conditions—rules of attention that determine which stories thrive and which fade into invisibility. In this sense, algorithms have replaced editors, critics, and curators as the new storytellers of our time.

In earlier editions of Code Uncovered, we explored how grand narratives dissolved into micro-narratives and how fourth spaces emerged as omnipresent communities beyond time and place. This new piece builds on those ideas to explore how algorithms now weave the invisible threads that connect those narratives—and often, manipulate them.

Credit: britopian.com, Data from November 2022

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🧩 The Semiotics of the Attention Economy

Attention has become the ultimate symbolic currency. Every second of viewing, every scroll or pause, signals value in a system that thrives on behavioural traces.

But unlike a human audience, algorithms don’t read signs for meaning—they process them as data. What matters is not the story’s truth, but its performance in a measurable ecosystem of clicks, comments, and reactions.

This marks a profound semiotic transformation. Meaning, once shaped by interpretation and dialogue, it now evolves through optimisation. The stories that survive are those that perform well under the logic of engagement.

As I argued in my Brand Stoicism edition (“Brand Stoicism: The Power of Necessary”), attention is a scarce and finite resource. Every unit of it carries weight. When attention becomes the object of trade, meaning begins to behave like currency—circulating rapidly, inflating easily, and devaluing over time.