Getting paid for reading e-mail

Some people receive many requests through the medium of e-mail, and some initiate requests through it. Massive flows of attention transact.

Why not have machines mediate a bid or have a pay-per-e-mail-message system to offset the real costs for participating, ie for transacting attention? Sure, your kid sister or best friend might get e-mail through to you free, but you could insist that an unknown insurance sales rep bid big bucks for the privilege. And suppose you wanted to talk with, say, R. U. Sirius ... er, well, Sirius could go broke quickly just sitting around answering fan e-mail. Would you pay a buck to have Sirius read and answer your message? Five bucks? It takes up the guy's time, y'know, and he's gotta eat. Maybe if things caught on - and his answers were good - someone might fork over, say, fifty bucks per message. How about if Jane Q. Hacker popped into cyberspace from Cedar Falls, Iowa, with a perspective that Fringeoids all over the world wanted to talk with her about? All it takes is an e-mail filter which accepts VISA numbers.