In an age of mass production, the global internet and digital everything, the most valuable commodities have become time and attention.

And everybody wants yours.Your work demands them.

Advertisers need them.

Broadcast media crave them.

Social networks want them.

Marketers, charity panhandlers, evangelists, celebrities, smartphone apps, political campaigns and others are all clamoring for you to focus on them and ignore the rest.[ Related: Android apps: Best of the best ]Finally there help, in the form of an emerging revolution in audio.

Low-power components, better batteries, smaller AI processors, rapidly advancing digital signal processors (DSP), advanced microphone arrays, improving Bluetooth specs and other technologies are converging to enable a new world of smart earbuds, headphones and hearing aids.