Is there simply too much information in this digital age.
It is a subject that has aroused the attentions of many but Tom Stafford dismisses the argument over at Mind Hacks (Ht-Richard Sambrook)
Tom writes that
The 'modern technology is hurting our brain' argument is widespread but it seems so short-sighted. It's based on the idea that before digital communication technology came along, people spent their time focusing on single tasks for hours on end and were rarely distracted.
Tom is replying to an article in Wired where Maggie Jackson who has written a book on the subject says that modern life
It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.
I have a lot of sympathy with Maggie's opinion as many people will testify that the information revolution has not led to an increase in leisure time but instead to making us slaves of production.
But back to Tom who believes that
the ability to focus on a single task, relatively uninterrupted, is the strange anomaly in the history of our psychological development.
The last 50 years have been a blip in human development for technology has let us concentrate on single tasking.Now the digital explosion means that human kind is back on track
1 comment:
Hi - A careful read of my interview with Wired and especially my book Distracted will show that I am not arguing that anyone in the past sat around single-tasking or focusing on one thing for hours! Nor would that be a good thing! In the Industrial Age, we did in fact idealize concentration and unbending focus in order to squeeze more efficiency from factory workers and school children. Now, in the digital age, we need to prize a variety of cognitive skills - from multitasking to skimming and even split focus.
But at present we are depending far too heavily on work- and life-styles that undermine our attentional skills. In short, we have created a culture that fragments and diffuses our attention - and so keeps us stuck on the surface of both relations and information. We need to recapture skills related to deep focus, reflective and critical thinking, and creativity in order to thrive in a complex, high tech age. If we don't, we are fast headed into a dark age - a time of technological advances but cultural forgetting and new forms of ignorance.
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