We always hear about the negative effects of our ever-shrinking attention spans. Here's an essay in the Wilson Quarterly that takes a more even-handed approach to the effects of the Twitter-induced rewiring of modern minds.
The printed word is not dead. We are not about to see the demise of the novel or the shuttering of all the bookstores, and we won’t all end up on Twitter. But we are clearly in the midst of a cultural transformation. For today’s younger people, Google is more likely to provide a formative cultural experience than The Catcher in the Rye or Catch-22 or even the Harry Potter novels. There is no question that books are becoming less central to our cultural life.
The relative decline of the book is part of a broader shift toward short and to the point. Small cultural bits—written words, music, video—have never been easier to record, store, organize, and search, and thus they are a growing part of our enjoyment and education. The classic 1960s rock album has given way to the iTunes single. On YouTube, the most popular videos are usually just a few minutes long, and even then viewers may not watch them through to the end. At the extreme, there are Web sites offering five-word movie and song reviews, six-word memoirs (“Not Quite What I Was Planning”), seven-word wine reviews, and 50-word minisagas.*
The new brevity has many virtues. One appeal of following blogs is the expectation of receiving a new reward (and finishing off that reward) every day. Blogs feature everything from expert commentary on politics or graphic design to reviews of new Cuban music CDs to casual ruminations on feeding one’s cat. Whatever the subject, the content is replenished on a periodic basis, much as 19th-century novels were often delivered in installments, but at a faster pace and with far more authors and topics to choose from. In the realm of culture, a lot of our enjoyment has always come from the opening and unwrapping of each gift. Thanks to today’s hypercurrent online environment, this is a pleasure we can experience nearly constantly.
It may seem as if we have entered a nightmarish attention-deficit culture, but the situation is not nearly as gloomy as you have been told. Our culture of the short bit is making human minds more rather than less powerful.
2 comments:
This is chatter, chatter, chatter. We will do anything to justify, who
we as a cultural have evolved into instead of taking responsibility
for the out of control aspects of our lives. We are a nation who over does
everything and are ignorant (but it's oh so blissful) to the consequences.
We over eat, hence we live in one of the most diseased countries in the
world. What a joke health insurance is. Why don't we get real and call it sick
insurance.
We over drink, over consume, over indulge, over waste...you get the point?
It's no different with the technologies of this decade. No one can dispute the awe factor of the advancements of technology and its positive impacts on the world, however, human doings (we are far from beings) once again have gone overboard and out of balance with all their gadgets and sadly, the consequences are evident.
We all feel so "connected" through the avenues of facebook and twitter and racking up our 1,208 friends (who we can unfriend with a push of a button) but the sad part is most are connected electronically but unplugged personally to the person sitting next to them. I see people dining together in a restaurant engaged in their individual phones instead of each other.
I don't see how five-word movies, six-word memoirs, seven-word wine reviews, or fast paced anything can have a lasting profound effect on your psyche. It's all chatter so why overload your mind with junk just to keep it distracted but busy. We have allowed this to be and we are passing it onto our children with a nod of approval. Everything is a choice.
I have over extended my five words so I will end here.
Beautifully put. I've been saying the same thing for years. But I also like smart, opposing views-- which this article surely was. It makes life more interesting.
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