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by Michy » Thu June 3rd, 2010, 7:08 pm
[quote=""Margaret""]We live in a more distracting world now than we used to, I think. I find that my attention span tends to be shorter nowadays than it used to be, and I think it's because so many of my activities require me to be constantly shifting my attention from one thing to another. I think we're just not used to focusing our attention on one thing for long periods of time, the way people used to do, so we feel more antsy when we have the opportunity to do that - like a part of our psyches are getting primed for the next distraction.
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There was an interesting author interview last evening on NPR about this very thing. The author they were interviewing (I can't remember his name or the name of his book) said pretty much the exact same things you are saying. He blames it on the Internet. I think he may be right; his arguments really made sense. One thing he said that I'm not sure about, though, is that humans are hard-wired to be constantly responding to distractions. He says the x-number of decades where we led a more contemplative existence was an aberration, really, and that we are now reverting back to our more natural state.
Last edited by
Michy on Thu June 3rd, 2010, 7:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.