I just read this really amazing interview with Maggie Johnson. She basically says that our fractured attention spans--induced by the constant distractions through digital communication--might have a potentially crippling effect on the way our brain functions. Towards the end she makes a particularly interesting statement, where she foreshadows a new sort of Dark Ages, one where our digital memory/archive basically dooms us to forgetting: "If we forget how to use our powers of deep focus, we'll depend more on black-and-white thinking, on surface ideas, on surface relationships. That breeds a tremendous potential for tyranny and misunderstanding. The possibility of an attention-deficient future society is very sobering."
I have had no less than five conversations with writers here in which they admitted at one point that they no longer have the attention span to read books. I am in the same boat, in that I read far, far, far less than I used to. And when I do read, it's in short bits. I think that my ability to deep focus is eroding and I'm not too sure I like where this could lead. What do you think about this?
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4 comments:
oh my gosh amy lee scott, this very subject has been one of great concern to me for some time now. i studied a relatively new concept called neuronal plasticity in a neuroscience class last year, which basically proves that our neurons move and grow and change directly according to our thoughts and behaviors - i.e. the way that we are thinking actually changes the physiognomy of the brain.
enter the mass media culture to which we belong: advertisements move at blinding speeds, camera angles switch in approximately two seconds, and even mass summits or debates and incredibly important political/historical/cultural events and etc. are often presented in quick summary clips in news programs designed like an entertainment special. it's common to hear people say that time is accelerating, and in fact it is, if we base it on perception: the average amount of time that an adult spends looking at objects in order to enter it into their consciousness (i.e. looking at a book and pausing and thinking, "book") is actually on the decrease. we are perceiving the world at an accelerated rate, and simultaneously understanding it in a more superficial way (though this may be somewhat arguable).
tom bell lent me "amusing ourselves to death" by neil postman this summer, and despite its somewhat apocalyptic nature (which i could only take in small doses), its foreword rings eerily prophetic:
"what orwell feared [in 1984] were those who would ban books. what huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. huxley feared those who would gie us so much that we would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. orwell feared we would become a captive culture. huxley feared we would become a trivial culture... in short, orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."
taking a step back, the effect of our entertainment based society might drastically impact our global culture, but reads mostly into a new generation of mass-multitaskers. some decry the habit, saying it actually causes us to learn and retain information more poorly, but others say that our brains are evolving (via neuronal plasticity, perhaps) to meet these demands. and if the above is true, that seems a rather terrifying conclusion.
npr conducted a four part series on the effects of a multitasking society that i highly recommend: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95524385
they also studied the effect of multitasking on our ability to learn: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7700581
ON THE OTHER HAND OF THINGS: i feel like it's really easy to decry change and label it as entirely terrible - but i wonder how much we might need to put away our inner nostalgic traditionalism that sighs that "everything was better in the good old days" and wish for the day long oratorios between stephen douglas and abraham lincoln (that weren't pre-scripted, that weren't offered in summarized chunks with interesting camera angles in order to sell to its audience). perhaps progression involves embracing our contemporary culture and learning to work within in - learning to create works that naturally reflect our connection to our current communities?
i could probably talk on forever about this, so i'll stop here - but really, terrifying and interesting and so very relevant.
i love what you said at the end there lia - i absolutely agree with this overwhelming hyper-nostalgia. so i think yes, all the options and opportunities open to us are miraculous and we should be grateful for the potentials of modern technological communication etc. but at the same time the danger is that we use these mediums and take the easy way out so to speak - we don't use all opportunities to their potential, and instead access them at all at the most superficial level. there is nothing wrong with the internet, with modern technology, if we use it for its good potential.
but as to this inability for deep focus - OMG yes. i often fear this dwindling away in me - my advice to this is 1. watch the documentary "into great silence" and 2. take really long exams in which you are forced to just sit and think and write :) and finally, 3. find someone you can really converse with - have patient, long, conversations in which you feel your relationship really develop over a long span of time.
these are the things which have kept me sane in the last year, and have hopefully preserved some of my ability to concentrate... but still. i'm woefully insufficient :)
oh!!!!! you guys are such good and lovely friends, these are exactly the sort of things i wanted to hear/talk about. jooj, i just watched some clips of into great silence and was so utterly moved. i love the idea of unhurriedness. how rare it is in my own life that i am unhurried. i am generally quite a frazzled person, running to and fro. people have to catch my arm and stop me in the halls. i think my goal this week is to live with silence more consciously and conscientiously. because so much of my time is eaten by noise and movement that i lose what can be gained from the rhythms of everyday tasks, of the cycle of action/boredom (i forget that boredom is a time of learning and processing, maybe not quote boredom, but the lulls that come between things), the rhythm of thought. thank you lovely women for sharing your thoughts!
and i am very much so looking forward to the npr things, as well! i think you're right lia, in that there is something off about becoming nostalgic. how counterproductive it can sometimes be. we live in this world as it is with all the changes and updates and refreshing screens and we have to learn how to make sense of it, how to think deeply even with the quicker pace.
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