Attention

I was planning my 309 assignment, but all of a sudden i just couldn't be bother and started to watching clips of youtube.

The issue i want to address and talk about is "attention"

Has the development of technology decrease our attention spam??

The development of technology has contributed to the development of multitasking where the user can consumer multiply about of media at once.

Now that leads to another question: the so called dumbest generation, lacking the ability to think, is it causes by the content from the website or just due to the lack of attention we contribute to thinking about the information?

In Mark Bauerlein's article "the dumbest generation" stated that youth are more comfortable with multitasking, and the information they consume from the website are dumb ed down, made shorter, easier to consume.

The way we consume information from books, in the library at home, the focus that we put towards the material is close to 100%. No distraction from music from ipods, calls and txts from mobile phones.

But now the distribution of attention is different due to technology, the fact that technology have developed in to some more personal made it apart of our everyday life. Good example of this would be music and the use of ipod. The size of the ipod made it so its easier to carry music on the go, allowing users to listen to music on the bus, in the library and even in a lecture. The multitasking function on mobile phones allows users to listen to music and play games while sending a txt all at the same time, with out saying the same goes for the computer, allowing multiple different application to be open at the same time.

Which divides our full concentration towards a certain subject and decreasing our attention spam, as the applications allowing users to jump around from program to program and site to site in a instant

Anahid Kassabian in the article "inattentive engagement" is interested in the problems of listening and how general people divides the attention in to primary and secondary, where primary is the main focus of sound, eg at the lecture, taking notes so the main focus is what the lecturer says. Secondary is the spill over or the other kind of sound that occurs at the same time but we do not take full awareness of, eg the entry of late comers to a lecture, or the quick comment from people in the class.

The point is that the ear can't really select what they want to hear, its the brain the labels the information that comes in.

With little information from silents and the book, the brain doesn't have to organize and arrange information that is coming in hence allowing the readers to fall in to the state of deep think about the subject their reading. but due to the distraction, people now don't have a main focus and don't remain on a subject for long as there's always something new hence people don't spend a lot of time considering and questioning the ideas the consume.

That's my assumption... happy to hear you perspective on this idea.