The revealing anecdote
Mentioned on Saturday evening here that one goes to conferences in the hope of hearing something original or insightful. Bart Becks came up with the goods yesterday. Becks, by the way, is Senior Vice President New Media at SBS Broadcasting Group Europe, and is in charge of managing the digital media initiatives over the web, interactive television, mobile devices and other platforms. Anyway, here's what he said.
"When I was young, I went up one day to my father's study and he was sitting in front of this new machine, concentrating. So I asked him what he was doing and he said, 'Typing!'Recently, I went into my 16-year-old nephew's room — Gavin's his name — music was playing, a couple of windows were open on his computer, and he was texting with his mobile phone. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, 'Nothing!' "
As Becks sees it, in one generation we have gone from doing single actions that required complete focus, to juggling a multitude of activities and regarding the accomplishment as trivial. This is what DLD07 speaker Linda Stone has been focussing on in her research. "Continuous Partial Attention," says Stone, "describes the behaviour of continuously monitoring as many inputs as possible, paying partial attention to each. We keep what we consider to be the highest priority contact or activity in greatest focus and constantly scan the periphery to see if something more important should be displacing our current top choice. Being busy, being connected, being a live node on the network, makes us feel alive. Or does it?!" Well, ask the kids?
