Honestly, this is one of the best things I've read in a while. It's like...everything I've been thinking about right there in text.
I think even now it's changing. Millennials have been bombarded with ads designed for the previous generation's 'knowledge economy,' which has made us highly attuned to BS. We don't buy products because your ad is laced with Spongebob-level stupidity (really now), and we close your clickbait page as soon as it resolves to an ad-laden screen. It's the same reason churches which preach 'God cares more about your genitals than starving kids. But check out our coffee bar!' are losing Millennials in droves. You gave us BS meters, now you have to live with it. I don't think the attention/advertising economy will go away (unless there's a significant economic upheaval [which may well happen with the increasing untenability of labor basis in the face of automation]). But I do think they made their own job hard.
I clicked through some of the links in the essay, other essays by the same author, and the topics of mindfulness and meditative awareness are topics that are very near and dear to me recently. Thank you for sharing.
You're very welcome. Feel free to post any of his other essays that you find particularly great here. I really, really enjoyed this one.
Cory Doctorow already wrote a book about such a future: http://craphound.com/down/download/