[W]e can still concede that we have paid a price for our promiscuous
involvement with novelty. We occasionally sense the nature of our
loss at the end of an evening, as we finally silence the television
after watching a report on the opening of a new railway or the tetchy
conclusion to a debate over immigration and realize that – in
attempting to follow the narrative of man’s ambitious progress
towards a state of technological and political perfection – we have
sacrificed an opportunity to remind ourselves of quieter truths which
we know about in theory and forget to live by in practice.
I think we're all aware that always-on, everywhere-available media are
challenging both the cognitive aspects of attention (e.g., research by
Nass et. al. demonstrates that media multitasking degrades performance
for 95% of the population) and social norms (Pew Internet and American
Life survey reveals that one in six Americans admit to bumping into
something or someone while texting and walking; Sherry Turkle warns
about the damage of looking at your smartphone while your child is
trying to talk with you; professors need to deal with students who are
looking at their laptops in class). From reflection on my own
practices to study of the scientific literature, my own meditation
practice, and 8 years of experimentation in "attention probes" with my
college students, I've come up with some simple and well-documented
ways to manage attention. […]
Unlike those who have been claiming that social media compel
distraction, I believe that social media don't compel distraction but
afford it -- and the difference has to do with whether one takes any
steps to manage attention. That's where mindfulness comes in.
Christopher Lydon's excellent interview with Jay Rosen is well worth half an hour of your time…
That idea of stories too big to tell, lies too big to take back, an
audience hooked on placebos it doesn’t believe — it all makes sense
about a malaise that the late Tony Judt was trying to pierce. Jay
Rosen is putting his finger on one of the biggest mysteries in this
troubled American moment. On one hand: what we call “media” has been
transformed by the digital revolution. The tools of publishing and
broadcasting have all been distributed, which is to say: democratized.
Critically independent websites like Politico, TPM, Daily Kos and
TruthDig have taken root, and vast horizontal networks like Facebook
thrive. Yet, on the other hand, in some strange way “the conversation”
has not moved. If anything, Jay Rosen says, the grip of reality has
been weakened. As Joan Didion remarked in 1988 about the specialized
and professionalized “process” around a presidential campaign: “What
strikes one most vividly about such a campaign is precisely its
remoteness from the actual life of the country.” I am asking Jay
Rosen: are we looking at the end of something, or the beginning of
something else?
