Comments on: Society’s Attention Deficit – Praise for Deep Thinking in the Era of Shallowness

By: 20 Cents from June 2010 | Balance Junkie

20 Cents from June 2010 | Balance Junkie — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:48:33 +0000

[...] Scott H. Young examines Society’s Attention Deficit – Praise for Deep Thinking in the Era of Shallowness. You’ll find lots to think about in this article, from the Paradox of Choice to cultivating [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:37:37 +0000

Once my laptop gets the battery life and dpi of a book then I’ll start reading 300 page+ books.

You mention culling the noise to read a book. I think you should also mention culling the bad books. You’ve mentioned before you believe in the 80/20 rule (I may be misremembering). In a blog post or in a twitter feed it’s easier to extract the information you want, the 20% percent you want. It’s harder to extract what you want out of a book. At least in the usual way people read.

Ya Facebook is noise and so is Twitter, but they are a form of socialising. While we can bash the social network for being noising but you have to extend that to friends. Friends are noisy and distracting. I think where the important should lay is in what gets your attention.

I would have liked to have seen this as an article for managing your attention not necessary culling noise. How many programs are you running that have an unread count, or makes a sound when updated? Is that noise or an attempt to grab your attention?

By: Mike Swickey

Mike Swickey — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:31:34 +0000

Scott, I have been amazed watching the progress of your blog. You focus on REALITY – and you are a thinker. It is quite obvious to me you put a lot of thought into your posts and you focus on quality over quantity. I would encourage you to read the new book, “The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr and take a look at some of his other writing, including his blog ‘Rough Type’. A 45 minute interview with Carr can be found here. http://surprisinglyfree.com/2010/06/07/nicholas-carr-on-what-the-internet-is-doing-to-our-brains/ I think that, based on this post today, you will find much in common with Mr. Carr. It is a truly fascinating interview; it hits on much of what you wrote in this excellent post. Keep up the good work, Scott!

By: Amelia

Amelia — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:52:44 +0000

Hi Scott,
Like you, I sip from the straw. I own a television for watching dvd’s but I have not had TV reception for many years, I really only follow four blogs – this is one, and I have been thinking about culling down my facebook friends for a while now… I really like your idea that “The pressure of the waterfall makes us shallower”; I think there is some real truth in that. My problem with the “information age”, is that I feel that I can get stuck reading about lots of different things but never actually sit down and analyse and come up with my own opinions – because I’m too busy reading everyone else’s.
Thanks so much for your insight

By: Scott Dinsmore

Scott Dinsmore — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:09:24 +0000

Loved the way you put it in the your post: Guzzle or sip. I try my very best to be a sipper throughout most of life but it is no doubt getting harder and harder. I recognize the importance of social media for marketing and entertainment reasons but does that mean I should burry myself in tweets and facebook updates? I doubt it. But where’s the happy medium?

I love reading and learning so much that I had to take a speed reading class a couple years back to keep up. The stack of books on my desk keeps getting higher. I guess that’s a little more waterfall like. The line is getting very blurry and articles like this help me to remember the importance and calmness of the straw approach…

Thank you and well done Scott,
Scott

By: Tyler Law

Tyler Law — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:39:51 +0000

Hi Scott,

Great ideas here, I love the website, but unfortunately have only been driven to comment since I disagree (sorry about that! praise should come more freely).

I think this is a bit of an oversimplification. As you’ve responded in comments, it is about a mixture of medias. Yes, short-form media takes away from long-form, but the reverse is also true. It is the old breadth vs. depth comment; I don’t think either is *intrinsically* better.

Also, I think you’re missing out on a third category of consumption: “the Waterfall Sipper”. This describes the example of your friends you’ve given, and myself. Yes, I truly do have over 1,000 unread items in my feed reader. And yes, I truly do dip in a few times a day to check what’s happening. I’m not interested in knowing EVERYTHING.

I’m also after silence. But I can achieve silence with unread RSS items, and an inbox with pending items. I can know that, and still go and read a book. In my opinion, the Waterfall Sipper gives me the best of both worlds.

Keep up the great work,
Tyler

By: Scott Young

Scott Young — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:07:41 +0000

Michelle,

I’m not here to put forward the proposition that all books are better. Some ideas *are* better left in their brief format. Simply that it takes more effort to read a book than to skim Twitter headlines or articles, and that books tend to contain different categories of ideas.

I think it’s important to have a mixture, but it’s easy to let the bytes overwhelm the books if you take a waterfall guzzling approach.

Sid,

Multitasking has uses, but I believe its range of usefulness is more limited than many of us would care to admit to ourselves.

-Scott

By: Sid Ban

Sid Ban — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 05:28:30 +0000

You framed your question in an either/or context. Is it possible that multi-tasking could be useful? For example, doing an exercise while watching television? Or, it may not be useful when studying something requiring concentrated thought. Moreover, what about multi-tasking when waiting for some software to load. There are also a number of events when you are talking to someone on the phone and doodling at the same time. This is suppose to help you to remember. It would seem that multi-tasking is not as bad as it has been labeled. Over-generalization, is it not?

By: kris - Fiji

kris - Fiji — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 05:26:19 +0000

Hi Scott

You have hit the nail on the head i am struggling with this like so many others – There is so much to do and so many things to catch up that one really gets lost in the guzzle of the waterfall of information and is only able to skim through the surface of things and never able to get to the depth of things.

Can you suggest the best way to sip from the straw rather than drink all that which is flowing through. Please also suggest an ideal daily timetable for scheduling ones daily activities better.

Thanks
Kris

By: Michele Nicholls

Michele Nicholls — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:53:18 +0000

This discussion reminds me of another similar one – ‘Pop music trains you to only listen to simplistic, brief sound bites of music, if you like pop music, you’re not intelligent enough to understand classical, you don’t have the mental discipline’
Personally, I think they’re both specious. My own musical tastes range from opera, concertos, through Folk music and pop to heavy metal rock, and my choice of reading is similarly varied, and I don’t believe myself to be atypical. We all have different capabilities to absorb information in different ways – my husband, for instance is a much more kinetic & visual learner, who struggles with reading, while I ‘hoover’ up books and almost any wordy material I can get my hands on!
I think this is about personal choice, as is the amount of information we want to collect in any given area, self discipline means different things to different people. Personally I’m neither a simple sipper nor a waterfall person, I do the waterfall thing on a new subject, till I learn who speaks my language, then I drink greedily from that particular fountain! Thank you for this refreshing fountain, Scott ;o)