Distraction Culture

Typos

A thank you to my father-in-law (to be) for bringing various typos on this site to my attention. He'll think I am being ironic but I mean it. Especially because it made me wonder if this was a generational thing. Actually I don't like them either, but of course I sometimes post here in a bit of rush like many do. Isn't that what blogs are for? You can be long and considered, short or sharp or a mix. And if it was a diary, would the odd spelling mistake matter? But then, a web site looks so structured that perhaps we expect higher standards than jottings in a notebook. We expect typographic perfection from the media, and if this blog is a medium then maybe we are simply extending our expectations.....

Is the same true for photography (see my previous post...)?

Anyway - as we increasingly mix content from people and organisations, we should anticipate mixed quality in the detail.

Continuous partial attention

Thank to Celia at work, this is a very very good piece on the problem of digital media reducing our ability to focus effectively. It speaks for itself, so I will not try to summarise: a small quote though....

For almost two decades, continuous partial attention has been a way of life to cope and keep up with responsibilities and relationships.  We've stretched our attention bandwidth to upper limits.  We think that if tech has a lot of bandwidth then we do, too.

With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges.  Continuous partial attention is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities.  We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network, we feel alive when we're connected.  To be busy and to be connected is to be alive.

We've been working to maximize opportunities and contacts in our life. So much social networking, so little time.  Speed, agility, and connectivity at top of mind.  Marketers humming that tune for two decades now.

Now we're over-stimulated, over-wound, unfulfilled.

Look carefully

The BBC are now building punter's commentary seamlessly into their on-line sports reporting: look here for the e-mail and text contributions lower down, during the run of play at today's Ashes 3rd test

Personal content - paid for

Fascinating development in personal content - a new company Scoopt are offering to act as agents for punters who capture newsworthy photos. So now personal content can make you money! And it is surely another major sign of the growing proximity between "ordinary" people and big media that photos taken by us are accepted as part of the news/entertainment output.

Scoopt are having to mount a PR defence against those who say their move is cynical and against the spirit of digital media. There was a good piece in Media Guardian (you'll have to register, but it is free)) quote:
......What all this suggests is that despite the net providing people with a revolutionary way of becoming journalists, it does not answer the central dilemma of journalism itself: what is it for? Democratisation has burgeoned alongside the "free" market economy that encourages people to believe that everything, including information, has a price. Is that really so great an advance?

Personally I think journalists can get a bit pompous when considering these issues, but Scoopt does not help its case with its home page which suggests that Concorde crashing is the sort of thing they are after....