2

By David Rothman

image Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, by Maggie Jackson, a Boston Globe columnist, lives up to its title, if you go by the reviews.

From Publishers Weekly: "Jackson posits that ‘our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion’ and addiction to multitasking are ‘eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress’ and stunting society’s ability to ‘comprehend what’s relevant and permanent.’"

image The Kindle vs. multi-use-machine angle: Yes, e-book angles exist, as I see it—in fiction and nonfiction; even recreational reading requires some focus. Certain Kindle and Sony Reader boosters would use this as an argument against multipurpose machines. My response to worries about IM and e-mail would be, "Turn ‘em off or just train yourself to ignore them!" How do you feel? I see a place for both multi-focused and dedicated. Depends on the human reader.

The e-book format and DRM angles: The E side of publishing is all too often flea-brained—distracted by the temptations of the short-term. Otherwise why would we have to tolerate so much eBabel, which, like DRM, is the enemy of permanence? How can certain publishers care so much about their own property rights and so steadfastly ignore those of consumers? People generally buy books to keep–half of shoppers in one survey. I guess it takes MBAs, lawyers and recalcitrant literary agents to ignore something so obvious.

The Dark Ages angles—and the fact that tech isn’t always indicative of enlightenment: Jackson told a WAMU radio audience: the "Dark Ages are actually often highly technological. In the Medieval era, there was the invention of the compass, the windmill, the mechanical clock, etc., etc. But it was a time of cultural decline, inevitably. Not only were libraries lost by the sixth century, but the memory of libraries [was] lost. If we live at the surface of life, if we only react to what’s new in our environment, we are entering our own definition of a Dark Age. And when we can’t go deeply in thought or in relationships—there are studies that show that 25 percent of Americans have no close confident. And the number of people who are more socially isolated has increased in the last 10 or 20   years. I truly believe we have at our fingertips wondrous advances. But we just need to use our different kinds of focus and not lose depth."

The Mailer angle: Norman Mailer and E, quoting him on TV and attention spans.

The TeleRead angle: From the start, I’ve talked about the use of e-books to encourage sustained thoughts. That means building e-books—addressing students’ needs and interests—into school curricula. Books encourage sustained thought.

The civic participation and political angles: I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

Related: Google search, Boston Globe chat transcript, Williams’ guest column in the New York Times, a WAMU radio interview and her listing in the Prometheus Books catalogue, which says the foreword is by Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature. Her topic and his just might be more than a little related.

 

 
2