Pay attention!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:00PM Interesting reading Gretchen Ruben's interview with Maggie Jackson over at The Happiness Project . Maggie has a book out called Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.
I am not sure that the internet or technology necessarily makes us more easily distracted. I can remember finding all sorts of pointless things to do whenever I had an essay to write at university. Maybe it makes the distractions feel more useful but nonetheless distracting?
I am also not sure about any coming Dark Age but I do believe that people have to take more responsibility for where they put their attention and their efforts.So much more is possible and so much more takes up our attention. Making the most of that scarce resource is going to matter more and more.
Reader Comments (1)
Its a dark age if you want it to be a dark age. As Howard Rheingold says what we make is up to us - if we want it to be the age of light we can make it that too.
We are today, as social philosopher Richard Sennett argues; seeking too recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms appropriate to our time. Indeed, Stephen Heppell considers the 21st century to herald the ‘learning age’. In the 20th century, he argues, we built big things (railways, universities) but the focus for the 21st century is ‘helping people to help each other’.
But we are disconnecting from the industrial age that's for sure.