Click below to load “In Defense of Distraction,” a 2009 New York Magazine article by Sam Anderson:
http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/
Anderson has written more than six thousand words here, and the full article is more relevant now than it was in 2009. Consider his final thoughts:
Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t—a sense of the way ten projects all dovetail into something totally new. They might be able to engage in seeming contradictions: mindful web-surfing, mindful Twittering. Maybe, in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction.
The idea of “associative genius” is fascinating, especially with the kind of access you now have to computers and smartphones. Note, too, the mention of being “mindful.” What we do is always connected to mindfulness, whether you use that term or not.
For our purposes, you should read the entire article, but you are required only to read the following excerpts:
Those excerpts are reposted below for those who prefer a non-Google format, or a format that permits tools like Snap&Read. (See the post on organization for a description and directions for Snap&Read.)
Read these excerpts, take notes, discuss the ideas, and think critically about how this applies to you, now, in this school. You will be asked to write a response to these excerpts (or to the entire article, if you choose to read it). In the comment section of this post, you should ask questions and offer your observations and insights.
Extended Response Focus
The response you will write to Anderson’s article does not need to consider more than the excerpts posted above. To do more than just what is required, however, which is one path to the top tier of profiles, you might look at his final paragraph, which is about you:
Which brings me, finally, to the next generation of attenders, the so-called “net-gen” or “digital natives,” kids who’ve grown up with the Internet and other time-slicing technologies. There’s been lots of hand-wringing about all the skills they might lack, mainly the ability to concentrate on a complex task from beginning to end, but surely they can already do things their elders can’t—like conduct 34 conversations simultaneously across six different media, or pay attention to switching between attentional targets in a way that’s been considered impossible. More than any other organ, the brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplasticity. London taxi drivers, for instance, have enlarged hippocampi (the brain region for memory and spatial processing)—a neural reward for paying attention to the tangle of the city’s streets. As we become more skilled at the 21st-century task Meyer calls “flitting,” the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information. The neuroscientist Gary Small speculates that the human brain might be changing faster today than it has since the prehistoric discovery of tools. Research suggests we’re already picking up new skills: better peripheral vision, the ability to sift information rapidly. We recently elected the first-ever BlackBerry president, able to flit between sixteen national crises while focusing at a world-class level. Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t—a sense of the way ten projects all dovetail into something totally new. They might be able to engage in seeming contradictions: mindful web-surfing, mindful Twittering. Maybe, in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction.
Anderson reported the research and wove in his insight back in 2009. You are those “kids who’ve grown up with the Internet and other time-slicing technologies” he describes here.
That means an important an authentic prompt is this: To what extent is this final paragraph accurate?
