Yes, Virginia, there is attentiveness

Virginia Heffernan has a funny little column in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. She opens by pointing to Jonah Lehrer and me as examples of people who allegedly believe that, as she puts it, "everyone has an attention span" and "an attention span is a freestanding entity like a boxer's reach, existing independently of any newspaper or chess game that might engage or repel it, and which might be measured by the psychologist's equivalent of a tailor's tape." This is complete nonsense. Lehrer and I have different views of how the internet and other media influence attentiveness, but I...