Greg O'Hanlon

Distracted from distraction by distraction

T.S. Eliot (1920)

In one way or another I've been pondering the matter of attention for the best part of two years. Our working/studying environments push ever more distractions and interruptions into the path of our attention with the result that sustained focus is extremely difficult. Finding time and space to think is highly important. As Edward de Bono pointed out "some of the best results come when people stop to think about things that no one else has stopped to think about." Competition for attention isn't a new problem; in Brave New World Revisited (1958) Aldous Huxley reminds us of "mans almost infinite appetite for distractions." However, given the rapid proliferation of the network, the contemporary picture perhaps differs in terms of scale - Clay Shirky suggests that abundance creates information overload and this began with Gutenberg and the printing press (circa 1450). Though we may believe otherwise, our attention is like a spotlight with only the directly illuminated areas of our world arriving at perception's door step. Tunnel vision is in fact part of our makeup. You can test this for yourself by visiting The Invisible Gorilla website which is based on research by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris.

In a knowledge based economy, information is the commodity and it is in abundance. We consume three times the amount of information we did 50 years ago. In 2011 we created and replicated a stunning 1.8 zettabytes (ZB) of data. That's 1.8 billion terabytes (TB) of data which is roughly equivalent to 200 billion 120 minute high definition movies. By 2020 the amount of data being produced will increase by a factor of 50, driven largely by internet enabled devices. In the UK the internet is now used by 73% of the population with 60% of that number using social networking sites (up from 49% in 2009). In the context of our daily lives, in addition to tracking possibly numerous e-mail accounts, data feeds and social media, there's also the sense that there's even more data out there which needs to be tapped as soon as possible. We are highly social creatures; communication with family, friends and confirmation of individuality sit deep within our psyche. Let's not forget that we follow 150,000 generations (3 million years) of humans who have evolved to live in one world, the physical world. Relatively speaking the web, as we know it today, is a very recent development (circa 1995) and with it came a second, virtual world. Our lives therefore are getting increasingly noisy and research shows that this increasing volume of information can adversely affect both performance and well-being; even causing burn out.

The human sensory system is extraordinary. The eye can detect as few as two photons entering the retina. Our ears are sensitive to changes in air pressure over a staggering range; from just audible to pain represents a difference of over 1 trillion. And yet, despite - or perhaps because of - these abilities, we can find it difficult to navigate with the car radio on and find reasoning a challenging problem almost impossible with the TV on. It appears that we reduce sources of stimuli in order to maximise the amount of attention we can allocate to a specific task. We may believe that our eyes capture everything before them like a video camera and that memories will play back as recorded, however the reality is that you see only a small portion of your environment at any given time. Similarly, we filter sounds continuously by way of identifying what we're interested in. The flow of sensory information into our consciousness is therefore compressed by attention. Which brings us to the subject of multi-tasking*; given the limitations in processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously, it is a complete myth and actually reduces your overall capacity - studies show that switching between tasks can result in a drop in IQ of up to 15 points. See Clifford Nass and Multi-tasking is Bad for Your Brain

Within any creative field focus is crucial. The ability to direct all your attention onto an important matter is the only way to create things of value. It's really very simple, deep thought takes time. Fast responses are driven by intuition and heuristics and though we would not be able to go about our daily lives without them, responses from our more deliberate, reasoning system must be provided processing time. In 2009 John Cleese made a presentation (video below) to the Creativity World Forum where he spoke about the origin of ideas, the unconscious self and how it's important to create "boundaries of space and time." Quiet time yields greater attentiveness and improved cognition. As long as our immediate attention is absorbed in reacting to new inputs we can never realise our fullest creative capacity.

Pico Iyer recently wrote in the New York Times that "the central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual."

To conclude, I'm not suggesting we all disconnect and ignore the profound possibilities of our combined intelligence. That would be silly. Our pre-web environment was relatively scarce in terms of content and hence time for concentration was more plentiful. We neither can nor should return to that state. What I am suggesting is that discipline (read: focus and endurance) are extremely important within the context of a creative endeavour. Evidence strongly suggests that we are more creative when free from interruption. Technological change invariably inspires/necessitates new social structures.

* Multi-tasking in this context refers to undertaking simultaneous tasks which are not automatic. For example, we can all walk and think at the same time; this is multi-tasking but walking is largely an automatic process i.e. we’ve done it so many times that it takes little or no additional processing.

Face it – The digital revolution is over

Nicholas Negroponte (1998)

Digital art, digital media, digital content, digital products…it goes on! Though few of us will have failed to notice that a great deal of our world is now transmitted and received as a string of 1s and 0s, in 2011, is the adjective ‘digital’ really relevant? Are we trying to suggest that by their very nature all things digital are the same, or, somehow different to their respective compound noun origins? Surely art is art, media is media, content is content and a product is still a product. The development of really great art/media/content/products involves stepping through a creative pipeline which we find to be remarkably consistent and irrespective of the tools used.

Convergence has forever forged media, data and personal IT to the extent that the content is indistinguishable from the underlying technology and the result is a transformative agent for both the mind and society. We shouldn’t be surprised by this however. Circa 1964 McLuhan pointed out ‘we shape our tools, and afterwards our tools shape us’ and Thoreau, 100 years earlier, suggested ‘we do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us’. It’s important therefore that we maintain an objective distance* so as not to be consumed by our rapidly changing environment.

Let us now focus on the often cited concept of the digital native. Marc Prensky’s 2001 Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants theory carries with it a number of dangers, particularly in an education context. In short the proposal** is that those born before the rapid proliferation of digital technology are immigrants, and those growing up with the technology are native. It’s clear that in relation to the younger members of our population access to information and communication technology (ICT) has reached an extraordinary level and their malleable brains are adapting to the multitude of interfaces and media layers with greater ease than say their parents. However, we must not take from this that the native generation are fully literate in, or implicitly understand the network. Remember that the primary online activity for our younger generation is social and/or recreational in nature. We find community silos, for example Facebook, in abundance and the notion that the Google Generation understand and explore the web widely is quite simply false. The badge serves no purpose other than to unnecessarily distance a portion of the population from the emerging reality and the very real concern is that by assuming too much we risk creating a significant skills gap in the next generation.

* The reality is that we find a conflict between objectivity and engagement. As artists and developers, if we’re not engaged we’re restricted in our ability to conjure the very best of ourselves and/or the project.

** Marc Prensky has since revised the theory in favour of digital wisdom…and yet the original iteration persists???

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift

Albert Einstein

We sit at the intersection between the art brain and the logical brain. One can make bold conceptual leaps with little reason other than instinct or emotion while the other demands process, order and efficient execution. Fusing left brain right brain processing is a task which is far from insignificant and while the relative outputs uniquely compliment each other, it is perhaps one of the most significant challenges facing us today.

As we undergo the consumerisation of IT and move towards ubiquitous computing, art and design are crucial components in humanising technology. Science fiction is now science fact with Roddenberry’s hive mind not such a distant possibility (see video from Ericsson below). There are currently in the region of 5 billion mobile users worldwide with 90% of the global population having access to a 3G network. Mobile internet will surpass the desktop within the next four years and as the separation between work, home, formal and informal is truly blurred, content is king.

Where once the ability to read and write were prerequisite to employment within a media context, an awareness of the audiovisual toolset is now the default condition. Discrete specialist facilities and tools are no more. Content developers are mobile and creativity spontaneous. Data wrangling, asset management and experience of multiple applications and workflows are fundamental. As we then move into the interactive space building strong ideas around a software driven core requires a unique skillset. Experience creators fuse ideas, design and technology. As Forrester's Mike Gualtieri put it great software talent means renaissance developers who have passion, creativity, discipline, domain knowledge and user empathy. We tend not to see how radical the changes of the last decade or so have been. In the USA, the Department of Labour estimates that 65 percent of 6 year olds starting out in school will eventually find careers that haven’t been invented yet. The labour market therefore is finding it difficult to keep up. Crucial for all of us is the willingness and ability to learn, unlearn and relearn.

In the midst of this technological whirlwind it is easy to forget that underpinning all of this is the human story. We are emotional beings bound by constants of motivation and traits of character which have been with us since day one. Communication and connecting with both hearts and minds (storytelling) has never been more important.