Will the rapid access to a great deal of information, and to many information devices, exceed our abilities to handle both them and our lives?
One possible response to the explosion of devices and access is the development of “continuous partial attention,” according to Linda Stone. Sf author Neal Stephenson agrees, and it bugs him. Matt Jones describes it like so: “something I can only vaguely describe as ‘closure’ and the lack of it online. [For example,] [h]ow do you know that you “know enough for now”"[?]
It’s not the same as multitasking; that’s about trying to accomplish several things at once. With continuous partial attention, we’re scanning incoming alerts for the one best thing to seize upon: “How can I tune in in a way that helps me sync up with the most interesting, or important, opportunity?… It’s crucial for CEOs to be intentional about breaking free from continuous partial attention in order to get their bearings. Some of today’s business books suggest that speed is the answer to today’s business challenges. Pausing to reflect, focus, think a problem through; and then taking steady steps forward in an intentional direction is really the key.”
Comments
@ 13:04
Stephenson’s rant is nothing new. Nor is continuous partial attention. A friend of mine remarked that any parent of a 2-year-old had that experience even 50-100 years ago.
@ 12:50
Kind of fits in with a what might be a Buddhist view of the nature of reality:
a continuum of of discontinuity
@ 14:57
Good antecedents for this phenomenon! Thinking of wireless humans as all being parents to infants is sobering.
I wonder if the Buddhist connection (an apt one) won’t recur in discussions of disconnecting from the always-on infosphere.
@ 01:49
I think all the communication technologies we have today (email, IM, Bulletin Boards SMS etc.) are focused on enabling “conversations” (connecting) where what we now need is tools that enables us to make sense of conversations, absorb and reflect, condense and distill and use the outputs to validate and enhance our goals and direction. Anything outv there?
@ 10:38
I agree with Brendan. People are addicted to their “comm gear.” Shifting attention constantly between copresent people, wireless phones, pagers, pdas, laptops, etc. What is needed is better education on digital manners. I believe that people communicate things they may not mean by how and when they interrupt communication. I think interrupting face to face conversation to answer a telephone or email speaks volumes about how a person values their relationship with the coporesent individual.
@ 10:59
Partial attention, IMHO, causes less to get done and diminishes the quality of participation in a dialog or decision making. There are times in this continuous stream of *very important* information, that we need to disconnect and focus, maybe hyper-focus on a particular topic. Increasing our bandwidth to accomidate partial attention is not the answer.
@ 05:38
I examine the link between CPA and synchronization amplification (a means of real-time performance acceleration) at Get Real (see http://www.corante.com/getreal/archives/002794.html).
“CPA is a different kind of load-balancing algorithm. Some people think that the only practical way to work is to take a single task and grind away until it is done, and then (and only then) look around to determine what is the right next piece of work to do. The reality is that we need to be constantly scanning the horizon for events that are worthy of our attention. We can’t a afford to stay heads down for hours or days at a stretch when critically important events may be occuring that could require us to immediately respond to them.
So, while first-in-first-out is a workable discipline for some situations (like super market check out lines), it fails drastically in some circumstances (like hospital emergency rooms).
Our work lives are increasingly like the ER and not the supermarket. So we will have to revert to a mindset that our earliest forebears must have applied while fashioning hunting gear, and with one eye scanning the savannah for predators and prey.”