We Are Just Not Digging The Whole Anymore : NPR - 1 views
www.npr.org/...-not-digging-the-whole-anymore
fragmentation reading media attention integration internet information surplus
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We just don't do whole things anymore. We don't read complete books — just excerpts. We don't listen to whole CDs — just samplings. We don't sit through whole baseball games — just a few innings. Don't even write whole sentences. Or read whole stories like this one. Long-form reading, listening and viewing habits are giving way to browse-and-choose consumption. With the increase in the number of media options — or distractions, depending on how you look at them — something has to give, and that something is our attention span. - Adam Thierer, senior research fellow at George Mason University We care more about the parts and less about the entire. We are into snippets and smidgens and clips and tweets. We are not only a fragmented society, but a fragment society.
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One Duke University student was famously quoted in a 2006 Time magazine essay telling his history professor, "We don't read whole books anymore."
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nearly half of all adults — 47 percent — get some of their local news and information on mobile computing devices. We are receiving our news in kibbles and bits, sacrificing context and quality for quickness and quantity.
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Here is the ultra-condensation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Mr. Darcy: Nothing is good enough for me. Ms. Elizabeth Bennet: I could never marry that proud man. (They change their minds.) THE END
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Fewer and fewer gamers are following gaming storylines all the way to completion, according to a recent blog post on the IGN Entertainment video game website.
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"With the increase in the number of media options — or distractions, depending on how you look at them — something has to give, and that something is our attention span." He ticks off a long list of bandied-about terms. Here's a shortened version: cognitive overload; information paralysis; techno stress; and data asphyxiation.
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Rockmore believes that the way many people learn — or try to learn — these days is via this transporter technique. "The truth is," he says, "that modern pedagogy probably needs to address this in the sense that there is so much information out there, for free, so that obtaining it — even in bits and pieces — is not the challenge, rather integrating it into a coherent whole is. That's a new paradigm."