Image by Aidan Jones via Flickr
It’s been said we now live in an age of CPA — “continuous partial attention” — as everyone texts and tweets and IMs and scans their Blackberry in the middle of a first date or a funeral. Writes tech expert Linda Stone, who says she created the phrase:
Continuous partial attention is an always on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that creates an artificial sense of crisis. We are always in high alert. We are demanding multiple cognitively complex actions from ourselves. We are reaching to keep a top priority in focus, while, at the same time, scanning the periphery to see if we are missing other opportunities. If we are, our very fickle attention shifts focus. What’s ringing? Who is it? How many emails? What’s on my list? What time is it in Bangalore?
In this state of always-on crisis, our adrenalized “fight or flight” mechanism kicks in. This is great when we’re being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a TIGER? How many are flies? Is everything an emergency? Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is.
Over the last twenty years, we have become expert at continuous partial attention and we have pushed ourselves to an extreme that I call, continuous continuous partial attention. There are times when cpa is the best attention strategy for what we’re doing; and, in small doses, continuous partial attention serves us well. There are times when cpa and ccpa compromises us.
The “shadow side” of cpa is over-stimulation and lack of fulfillment. The latest, greatest powerful technologies are now contributing to our feeling increasingly powerless. Researchers are beginning to tell us that we may actually be doing tasks more slowly and poorly.
To look someone in the eye and give them our undivided attention for minutes, maybe hours, at a time seems now as quaint, and wearying and unlikely, as chopping wood to heat your house or hauling water from a well for every bath.
Attention is our most valuable resource. That you are taking, making, the time to read this sentence is — for me — an honor. I know there is no greater gift than that of attention.
A mother, nursing her baby. The hospice worker, adjusting an oxygen line or morphine drip. Great sex. Helping your kid learn to play piano or bunt or make an omelette. That’s one on one time. Focused attention. It builds trust. It’s intimate.
Here’s my question.
When someone blogs clearly to get a lot of attention, millions of hits and shrieking arguments and name-calling and links and fist-waving, what do you, the reader, perceive as their goal? What is its value?
From my side of the computer screen — however fun it all is for you and me and all those other bloggers and their readers — the attention of thousands of strangers (unless you’re supporting yourself, as some do, exclusively through blogging) will not pay your mortgage or student loan or drive you to the hospital or make your dinner or laugh at your jokes.
Is it simply the ego thrill that people are actually listening to you? Talking to you and about you to one another?
What real, essential difference does this make, to the blogger and to their readers? Is it the creation — or consolidation of — (new) community?
Or (fogey that I am) is the whole point simply to be watched/listened to/admired/quoted/linked?
Are we so starved now for anyone’s undivided attention in any form? (Clearly, yes, as reality television seems to prove. Do you really want to be known and remembered and memorialized for appearing on “Wife Swap”?)
And why are we, then, unwilling to give it?
I value connection more than attention. To sit across a table or sofa or bedside with someone I know well and who knows me or who’s taking the time to get there, a deeper relationship a valuable destination, as I am.
It takes a long time, if you are in fact at all private, as some of us (even bloggers) still are, to slowly and respectfully unpeel the onion of someone’s personality and character. It took two friends of mine many years to confess, tearfully and fearfully, that each had been sexually abused as a child, or another, to tell me he is gay. It takes time and trust. A pearl is created slowly by accretion, layer upon layer of nacre finally producing something lovely and gleaming and precious.
I fear we’re becoming diamonds — or worse cubic zirconia — all hard and shiny, glittery things merely reflecting back to one another the shiny, polished side(s) we deem more marketable or publicly appealing. More eyeballs!
Without deeper connection, which only attention can spark and nurture, (think of a really great date), what are we doing? Or is ongoing, attentive connection now simply too…tedious?
Living in the middle of nowhere without cell reception re-taught me those values my parents had instilled in me. I relished moments with the people around me (when I wasn’t depressed about being alone) and really listened to what they had to say. Now I’m back in a town with reception and wifi and everything needed to go deep into that black hole of technology-induced seclusion. Though I still use it as a phone, I got over my Crackberry addiction. My emails and facebook things can wait (most of the time) until I get in front of a computer. Now I just wish I had more friends in this town to give my undivided attention to.
Dalina, what an irony…but I still am a big fan of chatting up strangers in the places you will soon become a regular, even in a small, new town. I have very few friends in my suburban town, still, but am on a first-name basis with Gregg, Aqeel, Hassan, Mike and Jose — all local merchants. Even a brief conversation can really brighten my day when it’s face to face.
I forget where I read it, but many years ago, when email emerged as form of communication someone developed a grid that had a scale of urgency on one axis and importance on the other and they used it to organize various forms of communication like phone, email, fax and so on. Today we have all these various channels with which to communicate with each other and we all have to be cognizant of importance and urgency when we employ them.
I would argue that as far as written forms of communication goes, that we are living in a golden age. We can chat, and tweet, and facebook, and even email one another, and all of that is really dependent on what level of conversation we need at the moment. If you think about writing a letter, or an email today, it is perfect for that non-urgent important form of communication that is useful for building connection and intimacy, albeit in a virtual way.
Nevertheless, it does represent profound attention and depth when you realize how long it takes for someone to absorb your words and develop their own in reply. It lacks the urgency of spoken conversation but for a lot of people, myself included, it affords the ability to think, and pull words we might not be able to snap out of memory in real time, and so it represents a deeper form of conversation in an of itself. And without all of the noise of real life, in some ways it allow us to get to know one another is ways we might miss otherwise. That is a wonderful thing, for even if you are sitting there cranky and tired, what you produce in a post, or an email to a friend, is different.
As for blogging, I am sure there is some bit of attention getting, and validation that occurs on both sides of the post/reply thing that occurs here, but I never forget my Shaw here in this place. He said something very profound in a way, and it goes like this: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
One may argue that this dance of ideas is shallow and unfulfilling because we aren’t sitting down at the coffee shop in person, but if you think of the people you meet on this other plain, it’s still rather remarkable. There is focused attention, trust, and intimacy to it when it is done well. And even when it is not done well, it can still be very entertaining and engaging to debate and argue on this plain as well.
In the end, what you have are minds engaging with one another in new ways. If that makes us appear more shiny to each other at times, so be it. Maybe the act of sharing in this way allows us to reach for more of the divine within us.
john, as usual, your eloquence amazes me. You take over the blog and I’ll go sit and chill for a while!
I love this idea of exchanging two ideas (verus two apples) and I agree there is, for me and many, terrific value in the chance to “meet” people in this odd, a-corporeal fashion that is asynchronous.
I also appreciate your point about — (less obvious to a writer for whom words are oxygen) — people making *more* time to answer thoughtfully (sometimes!) in a comment or blog post than whatever they might shoot from the hip verbally. I agree that for some people, this might be an easier path to intimacy or revelation.
I still am starting to see a craving for the on-screen (easy) rather than the more challenging face to face.
It’s funny: every time a new wave of technology fosters the question, “are we too enamored with instant gratification and self-importance” I am reminded of the old Woody Allen flick “Play It Again, Sam” in which Tony Roberts calls his office each minute he’s in a new place to report on his whereabouts in case he urgently needs to be reached.
My point is, the narcissistic and self-important will always find a way to be the center of attention instead of putting his/her attention where it needs to be, i.e. on the task or person at hand.
imho, great point. Thanks! Anyone who knows NYC knows all about this.
7 billion of us all craving attention and interaction. What was the question?
I think it might be a question of location as well. I live in a downtown area of a capital city of a sparsely populated Western state, and even now I still people who value the random get-together (myself included). I think it might have partially to do with the fact that some places in the state don’t have cell-phone reception or even much in the way of internet access, so the primary way a lot of people can communicate with each other is through the old fashioned face-to-face communication. There are towns here that number under 100 people, there’s one about an hour away from where I live that’s about 400 people tops.
With that said though, the attitudes are changing here in the populated valley. I see so many people walking around the mall with their significant other or their family and constantly have their cells out to text. I was waiting for a fitting room at one of the department stores, and one of the ladies was in there for a long time, just sitting and texting in her clothes she was trying on in the dressing room and refused to leave until her conversation was done. Makes me glad I don’t work retail anymore
Thankfully, my text-addicted friends finally understand that I don’t respond to texts in a timely matter (something about forgetting to charge my cell, except in case of an emergency), and send me emails if they want to hang out. Or heaven forbid they call me. I am not reachable on Twitter, I’ve just recently made a Facebook account, and I killed my Myspace account years ago. Face-to-face, calling me on my cell, or sending me an email are the only ways to talk to me, and I intend to keep it as such for awhile.
Sarah, I see this addiction to texting everywhere. Is every tiny scrap of connection — electronic — so crucial in that very moment? I await a wedding where bride and groom simply text their I Dos and don’t even look up or at one another.
That might happen!
It already has:
It was on the news a bit ago, groom updating his facebook status on the altar.
Just. Shoot. Me.
(thanks, Sarah!)
Enjoyed the article very much. This reminds me a little of one week when I was between mobile phones: it was awesome. Don’t get me wrong- it’s great to check my emails everywhere and I find it very useful, but it was really nice to have a proper break from doing ten things at once.
ptp, thanks! I’m consistently “losing” my cellphone because I really don’t want to use it. Doing 10 things at once means, as we’re learning from neuroscience, we’re probably doing 6 of them badly.
My motto is do less, slowly. I’d rather try to produce the highest quality I am capable of, whether listening fully to my partner or making a great meal than half-assing it and being considered (ugh) more “productive.” I always prefer to be creative and I don’t believe it’s possible without truly focused attention. This may render me unemployable by most people, but I know what it allows me to do.
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