Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson

Jan 14, 2012 Donna added it

Shelves: dnf

You know, there are books that are really interesting, you want to read them and see what they have to say, but at the end of the day you just can't bring yourself to actually finish reading it, for whatever reason. Whether it's you're just not in the right frame of mind or you have other things to do or whatever. That's what this book was for me.

I appreciated the message the author was trying to send. I get it. We are one hell of a distracted people because of the technology that we use. That s...more You know, there are books that are really interesting, you want to read them and see what they have to say, but at the end of the day you just can't bring yourself to actually finish reading it, for whatever reason. Whether it's you're just not in the right frame of mind or you have other things to do or whatever. That's what this book was for me.

I appreciated the message the author was trying to send. I get it. We are one hell of a distracted people because of the technology that we use. That same technology is robbing us of the ability to think and connect deeply because our brain has learned to process information rapidly and move on, not allowing it to sink in at all. I do get it. And I totally agree. But the point that was being made, I don't think, rendered an entire book.

I got I'd say a little less than halfway through it before I just retired the thing. I just felt it really dragged on and belabored the point a little too much. Am I a product of technology in not wanting to delve deeply into what the book had to say? Or what I just plain not interested enough? I'd like to say the latter. It was interesting, just redundant. If you keep firing the same point at me laid out in different sentences, I'm going to start to zone out because I got it the first six times it was said. Let's move it along. I can think on it. Really. I don't need it talked at me over and over and over again.

While I do agree that technology will ultimately destroy us (optimistic, I know), I don't think it's fair to lump a person's disinterest in something as ultimately a product of their inability to think outside of technology. I don't need anyone making excuses for me. While I'm distracted by shiny things, sometimes I'm just not interested because I'm bored by the material. It's allowed and has been happening for eons outside of technology.

So this book doesn't get a rating because I didn't finish it. If you're looking for a good, in-depth view of the effects technology has on society, you'll find it in this book. But it is wordy, it is heavy-handed and it is redundant so beware. Not like I didn't know I would be getting something akin to an essay in this book. I just didn't think it'd be so derivative of itself.(less)

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Mar 20, 2013 Ringling Library added it Recommends it for: Multitaskers

So, you’re watching TV while you’re texting, when you notice you’ve got mail—email, that is. Right then your roommate begins the daily harangue… Feeling a little distracted? Having trouble coping? Wonder what all this back & forth is doing to your brain?

OR

Do you revel in the extremes: latest gadgets, newest video & audio, multi-tasking to the furthest extent allowed by law? Do you pride yourself on how much you can absorb & manage simultaneously?

Either way, your future is already her...more So, you’re watching TV while you’re texting, when you notice you’ve got mail—email, that is. Right then your roommate begins the daily harangue… Feeling a little distracted? Having trouble coping? Wonder what all this back & forth is doing to your brain?

OR

Do you revel in the extremes: latest gadgets, newest video & audio, multi-tasking to the furthest extent allowed by law? Do you pride yourself on how much you can absorb & manage simultaneously?

Either way, your future is already here, and the impact of current technologies on humanity is a hot topic. Among the philosophers parsing the research statistics and offering warnings is Maggie Jackson, with her dystopian tome, Distracted.

Jackson anticipates a society in which deep thinking is utterly replaced by a kind of surface skimming for information—when no one has the time, interest, or ability to direct his/her attention to thorough mastery of any philosophy or discipline. Humanity’s past would be seen as irrelevant, and it would be as unknown as it was during the Dark Age. In fact, Ms. Jackson’s book posits the coming of a new dark age: a time of forgetting.

According to Ms. Jackson, knowledge workers lose 2.1 hours every day due to distractions—many of them self-caused. Almost everyone multi-tasks—and almost all of those workers think they handle it well & are good at it. However, science has recently proven that only one thing can be done well at a time. The human brain (like the computer) works serially—doing one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is not only the enemy of deep, concentrated thought, it actually derails the accumulation of long-term memory stores. And, of course, memory is an important factor in creating human individuality.

We’re losing our collective memory, too. We’re always on the go & never at rest. Our pause button doesn’t work. There’s no time for reflection on the past or considered planning for our collective future. Global thinking & access to a whole world of information has minimized the local in importance. We’re so distracted by the world-wide text & information glut pouring over us, that we don’t notice the humanity that’s nearby. And, we are becoming seriously detached from that very humanity: Many people move so often, due to global travel for work, that they don’t even try to meet new neighbors. They feel rootless & think of this as the new norm.

One of Jackson’s main themes is the rise of the virtual as a substitute for the real. Now, cremation urns commonly represent the recently deceased. Millions of people have “friends” they have never met and likely never will meet. Avatars substitute for portraits on Facebook. And, lots of man/woman hours are spent playing games about virtual worlds.

The over-reliance on machines is also worrisome to Ms. Jackson. Conversations have devolved to texting & Twitter—even with participants sitting in proximity. Similarly, a burgeoning field is the development of robots to care for and comfort the sick and dying. More disconcerting still is that the use of intra-body machinery and implants has blurred the boundary between humans and their tools. Already, some children see no need for visits to the zoo, preferring instead their plush, electronically-animated animal friends.

So, does Ms. Jackson see any hope for the future in an age overwhelmed by momentary utility, fads, superficiality, information skimming, constant distraction, & a general lack of interest in the depths of humanity found in our fellows? Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) yes! In the last chapter, she details the latest advances in the study of attention. Attention science is a young science, but, it is already obvious that it is possible for a person to train his/her brain/mind to increase extraordinarily the amount of focus needed for tasks. This training can allow the participant, like an athlete, to lose him/herself “in the zone”.

Do I think a dark age is coming? Most likely. Do I think Ms. Jackson proves her thesis? Not especially. But, read Distracted and, then, you can decide for yourself.(less)

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Jul 11, 2010 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: current-events

I liked this book and felt much of it is accurate yet I don't seem to have internalized Maggie Jackson's concerns of an impending dark age. If science consistently finds that multitasking leads to lowered worker productivity, businesses will find ways of abandoning it. I'm not saying I believe in the economic liberal ideal that says that businesses always choose to do the right thing because of the Invisible Hand, I believe that this is more along the lines of Taylorism. Businesses spend loads o...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Canadian Reader rated it 2 of 5 stars

Aside from alerting the reader to the names of some psychologists working in the field of attention and multi-tasking, this book has little to recommend itself to a reader who believes he is in for a reasoned consideration of the erosion of attention in our society. The author has clearly done a lot of research, but many chapters read as mash-ups of other people's ideas--and many of these ideas are not clearly related to the problem of distraction at all. In one paragraph alone, I counted quotat...more Aside from alerting the reader to the names of some psychologists working in the field of attention and multi-tasking, this book has little to recommend itself to a reader who believes he is in for a reasoned consideration of the erosion of attention in our society. The author has clearly done a lot of research, but many chapters read as mash-ups of other people's ideas--and many of these ideas are not clearly related to the problem of distraction at all. In one paragraph alone, I counted quotations from five different researchers/commentators and/or academics.

About halfway through the book, the author seems to have more or less abandoned her stated topic (the erosion of attention), turning instead to ennumerate the collective losses within a "distracted" culture. Among them she identifies the loss of trust (attributed to the explosion of surveillance technology), the loss of deep thinking (due to the volume of information on the internet), and the loss of connection to ourselves (due to our tendency to anthropomorphize robots). There are sections that consider our "neo-nomadic" life style, "fast" hand-held non-messy food, fMRIs of the reading brain--complete with neuroanatomical terms, and the history of book making. A notably baffling section addressed cartography--which I was hard pressed to find connected with the topic of the book in any significant way.

The fact that many of the individuals interviewed or commented upon hardly seem representative of the general population--e.g. a snack food executive who constantly travels or a couple who monitor their young child's move from crib to bed with a surveillance camera--made Jackson's conclusions seem suspect.

Initially, Jackson seemed to want to place the "dark age" that might be coming within a historical context, but throughout the book, she did little to define or clarify what she meant by that term, or how the ennumerated losses contributed to the darkness. In the end, the text is not a reflection on distraction as much as a meandering set of ruminations, some of them far less clear than others, on what technology might be doing to us. It is too allusive, too rambling, and too packed with quotations.

I spent a great deal of time--too much, I now realize--trying to figure out what Jackson was getting at. If you must read this, get a library copy. But better advice would be to pass on this one completely.(less)

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Jun 25, 2009 Brian Ayres rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this book because the premise is a verification of what I experience daily as a high school teacher. Students, and teachers for that matter, cannot seem to maintain proper attention to grasp key concepts. Maggie Jackson sets out to explain why attention is important to memory, which in turn provides all of us with a sense of self, and success in life. However, she delivers a choppy book filled with vignettes of our modern day multitasking but fails to show how this might lea...more

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Jul 24, 2010 Jesse rated it 1 of 5 stars

Don't laugh, but I merely skimmed this book.

I heard Maggie Jackson on a radio interview and was intrigued by her discussion of the apparent diminishing of our attention spans. After my perusal of the book, I determined that the anecdotal nature of her material made for better radio than reading. While trying to give this book a serious read, I wearied quickly of the platitudes regarding the displacement of our attention from such things as books to such things as twitter.

Even more quickly, I g...more

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Jan 18, 2009 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

You know, I liked this book a lot. The subject matter is one that really interests me because I am trying to become more focused. Another reviewer called this a self-help book. I disagree. It's a more an introductory exploration of a current topic. The anecdotes, stories, and research were intriguing. I found the nonlinear approach to be appropriate, considering the topic and author. The author is a journalist, not an expert. She is a product of this age of distraction and her writing style refl...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Courtney rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like the topic of the book, and found that it was easy to buy in to the notion of the distracted mind reflecting a distracted society. The belief that focus is key to thinking and learning is useful. There are some interesting books referred to in this text.

Yet, at the end of the book, I find it difficult to recall easily any matters of depth and a corresponding solution. Quite possibly, I was distracted while reading the book. I don't think I'd recommend this book for a cover-to-cover read, b...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Connie Mayo rated it 2 of 5 stars

I kept thinking that my review of this book would start along the lines of, "I wanted to finish it but I was just too... distracted". (I did actually finish it, though.) Yes, I am a skimmer when things don't hold my interest, but because of that I was REALLY interested in this subject matter. But I tried and tried to stay focused and it was really hard. Part of it was the language which I found unnecessarily high brow, like "the context of our sense-making is as important as the form of the text...more

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Mar 26, 2010 Alex rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

This book was the worst sort of literary theory, stream of consciousness, word play unmotivated by data drivel. The author's basic argument is that the profusion of media, entertainment options, and high frequency distractions in our lives is driving our society into another dark age akin to the middle ages in Europe, where the light of learning is extinguished and we all start clubbing one another with sticks. I didn't find her arguments even marginally convincing, though I consider her somewha...more

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Jan 20, 2010 Alyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: marti, non-fiction

Hard to focus on this fairly dense book! haha. She makes many valid and thought provoking points. I don't want to waste my life always distracted and fragmented.

Three pillars of attention:

awareness (alerting)
focus (orienting) Our bridge to one another
judgement (executive function)

"Nor will we learn from the past by indulging the impulse to save all...to cope with data floods."

"Moreover, if we turn to machines when we can't be there for one another, we risk losing the will to keep trying to full...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Mel rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century-non-fiction, library

I got this book for a library school essay; it's not the type of thing I normally read! The book could easily have been subtitled "what's wrong with American society". I think the book the author was trying to write though was what's wrong with Americans. Her premise seemed to be because Americans spent too much time multi-tasking and distracted their culture was doomed and going to die unless people started learning how to focus, and (unsurprisingly) one way was Buddhism's mindfulness! She spen...more I got this book for a library school essay; it's not the type of thing I normally read! The book could easily have been subtitled "what's wrong with American society". I think the book the author was trying to write though was what's wrong with Americans. Her premise seemed to be because Americans spent too much time multi-tasking and distracted their culture was doomed and going to die unless people started learning how to focus, and (unsurprisingly) one way was Buddhism's mindfulness! She spent a lot of time talking about the "neuroscience" of what happened to a person's brain in these different situations, and how this was bad, and how increasing concentration was good. Of course she's an author and journalist without a background in neuroscience and, as someone with only a degree in psychology, what she was saying didn't make any sense. She'd try to explain brain processes, but then not say what that actually corresponded to. Not to mention the problems she was discussing were cultural phenomena, and so needed a cultural answer, not an individual one. I did think the book started fairly well. It was an enjoyable criticism of the way modern society works. How we spend all our time doing many things at once, and how everything seems to be dummed down. My favourite part was when she had a 10 year old talk about how they liked using power point because it was easier to write without any detail and you didn't have to know what you were talking about. She compared the innovations of today's society with that of Victorian times, and made some nice comparisons between the two (partly unintentionally explaining the interest in steam punk amongst modern geeks). However, sayings how society today was like society in the 19th century didn’t really further her argument that there would be a coming cultural dark age. In fact she did little to justify this at all, mostly just pointing out how bad things were. She also failed to address how a dark age of American society would be affected by the fact that we are now living in a global society, or how many of the problems she was talking about could be found in other cultures. This was obviously a book designed by an American, for Americans, with little consciousness of the outside world, except when European history was needed. After the first few chapters focusing on technology, and how families spend no time together anymore, there was a chapter on the evils of fast food, in particular drive throughs, and "nomadism" the fact that people spend lots of time travelling everywhere (particularly be plane). I found this chapter the most irritating. It seemed to make no judgement for class or economic status. I wasn't sure how eating out all the time impacted a distracted state, rather than simply an unhealthy one. And I really don't think most Americans spend all their time on airplanes travelling back and forth for business and pleasure. (Of course when talking about how this was bad the environmental impact was not mentioned once). The "evils" of technology chapters were quite strange too. The first talked about how parents used technology to spy on their kids. Putting up cameras in their rooms to record them, which I found really creepy. The other example was a guy who banned his 12 year old son from the internet for a year, because the dad thought one of his son's friends might be a paedophile in disguise. This struck me as SUCH bad parenting. You don't ban a kid because you think he might be in trouble, you explain the dangers to them and educate them so they can make better decisions. He then put in parental spyware on the computer so he could ban all sites that he didn't think were appropriate for his son including ones "with heavy metal music" (dear gods!) The other part was talking about how AI and robotics were being developed. She seemed offended that the idea that robotic animals could be used as surrogates for actual relationships, or to build empathy. As many pop-cultural references as she made, the fact that she neglected to talk about the exact use of the robot pets to build empathy in Do Androids dream seemed quite odd. Her point seemed to be that we liked robots, or identified with them too much, and that was bad. (Though if sci-fi has taught us anything it's that not liking the robots and treating them poorly is what leads to rebellion). While complaining about how kids were getting dumber and the lack of good education she was scathingly critical of attempts by universities and university libraries to increase information literacy (how people are taught research skills). She dismissed this out of hand as being outdated, similarly to her dismissal of teaching critical thinking. When surely teaching critical thinking and information literacy skills are exactly the two solutions to fix the problems of attention and ignorance that she is complaining about (travel and fast food would need a different approach). (228 179 and 163) It wasn't a totally bad read, the style was engaging and she quoted from all sorts of people that I liked and enjoy reading. But I felt that her overall arguments were flawed and her solution to the problems presented was inappropriate. Still there were some good quotes to include in my essay so it was worth reading. (less)

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Oct 04, 2010 Richard Thompson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Subtitled: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Ironically, I found the book to be very distracted and distracting. It is possible, of course, that I was simply distracted — but I don’t think so. The introduction starts off well with the suggestion that our ability to pay close and deep attention is severely compromised by television, cell phones, instant messaging, hyermobility and the cascade of options offered to us by the consumer culture and that if we lose the ability to pay a...more Subtitled: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Ironically, I found the book to be very distracted and distracting. It is possible, of course, that I was simply distracted — but I don’t think so. The introduction starts off well with the suggestion that our ability to pay close and deep attention is severely compromised by television, cell phones, instant messaging, hyermobility and the cascade of options offered to us by the consumer culture and that if we lose the ability to pay attention there will be dire cultural and social consequences — that we will be in danger of descending into a dark age. Unfortunately, (and I may have be distracted when I read that section) Jackson never defines what she means exactly by “dark age”; she does mention at some point late in the book that different people have different ways of defining the term but she never plunks down with her definition. The book is well larded with interesting bits and pieces but Jackson never bothers to mention why those bits and pieces are pertinent to her thesis. With a bit of work, the reader could no doubt untangle the connecting thread, but I think Jackson could have done a better job of that. It might also have been useful if she had given the reader a hint about where she was going before she dashed off in yet another direction: “Our reduced ability to pay attention is partly a commitment issue. Many things in our society tend to make us more suspicious and less trusting. Let me illustrate...” In the last chapter she talks about the hope that a dark age might be averted and outlines research being done on training attention and other mental skills. At points she seems to be arguing that the way to cope a splintered and distracting environment is to train your brain to work faster. Getting rid of your TV and cell phone, sitting down with your family for dinner occasionally, taking a walk, slowing down in general — strategies for actually reducing the amount of distraction that one allows into one’s environment — seem to be either impossible or undesirable in her world view. (less)

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Oct 06, 2008 Kitty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-criticism

This was an interesting book, but I think it suffers itself somewhat from the disease of distraction. There are many footnotes on each page which pull you away from the text. Because of that it was difficult sometimes to remember what idea the author was trying to explain.

It's a bit of a self-help book too and there's a chapter at the end (not sure if it's the last one but probably) that talks about ways people extend their ability to concentrate and attend to things. She mentioned a then curre...more

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Feb 11, 2010 John Kennedy rated it 2 of 5 stars

The first part of the book is terrific, positing the tradeoffs of a society that is more connected than ever, yet more unfocused than ever. The fallout is that we're never really able to concentrate because of all the interruptions: cell phones, e-mails, text messaging. "Knowledge work can't be done in sound bites," Jackson says. We are losing the ability to communicate in face-to-face contact. The typical elevator behavior now is not to engage in conversation with other riders but to pull out o...more

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Aug 28, 2010 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jackson does an great job pulling together examples from diverse sectors to explore the current state of attention. She makes a compelling case that we need to regain our attention or lose out on much of our culture and intellectual achievements. I thought the subtitle was a bit hyperbolic when I started, but not so much by the time I finished.

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Apr 05, 2010 Jeanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

The book is about how technology is changing the way we think, making us lose the ability to think deeply and thus contends the author create the collapse of our culture. It's an interesting book but written far harder than it needs to be. I keep joking that I was constantly getting distracted it require so much effort to read the thing. LOL...

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Aug 29, 2009 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Laura by: Heard/read interviews with author

Lots of little insights, and well-researched, but overall, the book suffers from the very problem it's describing: too much information to make sense of, too little of the author's own thinking. My favorite chapter was six, on the nature of reading and how it changed as our culture went from being primarily oral, to literate, and now to information overload.

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Sep 15, 2012 Karen Mardahl rated it 3 of 5 stars

(Adding to shelf to keep tabs on my audiobooks. Read date is approximate.)

I liked it and thought it was fairly OK. The idea of the book caught my eye. I think the problem is more that we let ourselves get distracted and don't focus on what we are doing at the moment.

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Jul 25, 2011 Alfredo rated it 3 of 5 stars

While not sure about the apocalyptic predictions she makes, the case for a society distracted by gadgets is appropriate. The inability to focus on a task is turning us into a society of drones ready to either tune out, or follow any leader/prophet that provides some leadership.

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Feb 26, 2009 Charles Perry rated it 5 of 5 stars

When the Roman Empire feel they were more concerned about their entertainment. 83.8 million American people watching 4.1 billion little video clips in one month 5/1/2008 - are we not distracted? Great read.

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Jan 26, 2009 Desiree rated it 3 of 5 stars

Fairly interesting book about the Distractions of modern life. The author claims out attention is missing when we do things such as IM, e-mail, tv, etc, all at the same time...

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Jun 19, 2011 Lauren Patrus rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really interesting, thought provoking. Her writing style unfortunately embodies the title... and it wasn't necessarily ground breaking information, but it was helpful.

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Jun 21, 2009 Bug added it

Shelves: child-discipline-and-development, teacher-books

Highly recommended to me by very experienced teachers--So I feel confident recommending it without reading. Have not yet had time to read.

Great read for parents, I expect.

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Aug 30, 2012 Barbara rated it 5 of 5 stars

A brilliant analysis of what our obsession with gadgetry is doing to our brains. Fortunately there is a slight note of optimism at the end.

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May 11, 2012 Kathleen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, psychology

This book had very little to do with what I thought it was about. I expected lots of data and scientific explanation. Instead, it was more like Jackson's lament for a slower life, fleshed out with historical observations and a few vague science bits here and there.
I didn't find the chapters to be very well organized. And I often felt as I went from one paragraph to the next, "how did I get here?"
I'm inclined to agree with Jackson, that our decreasing ability to pay sustained attention is problem...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Coruja rated it 3 of 5 stars

Thesis was pretty spot-on. Could do without the upper-middle class presuppositions so common in social critique.

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Mar 29, 2013 Lori Grant rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: concepts-trends-social-trends

An optional-read book for knowledge workers and entrepreneurs on concepts and social trends.

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Feb 02, 2012 Dharma rated it 3 of 5 stars

A shallow book with a decent premise. Instead of depth the author mostly flits around just skimming the surface. How ironic.

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Mar 23, 2009 Mimi rated it 1 of 5 stars

tl;dr.

(ha ha ha ha ha! seriously though, this bored me. oh the irony.)

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