Clickstream

Attention and Amusing Ourselves to Death

I was listening to a talk on continuous partial attention (CPA)and it's goodness/badness and it made me want to re-read Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" because it's a parallel discourse written on a similar topic before the web existed. Postman asserts that different communications mediums shape communications and public discourse. A big part of his assertion is that print carries rational argument effectively but television (and to some extent radio) hampers or removes it. I wonder what he'd say to CPA and the interactive written word?

Forward from the book:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Wikipedia entry on the book.

Postscript: Neil would say that it's a "faustian bargain." Here's an interview with Neil Postman I found on YouTube discussing the Internets, learning and information incoherence. Highly recommended.

Labels: attention, information architecture, media

Posted by Mark Friday, February 02, 2007 12:01:00 PM | permalink |