In 1985 my favorite comic strip began. It detailed a small boy and his “friend” though some may simply call it his imagination. It didn’t take long for the strip to become famous. I was three when the strip ended. Before the final strip was made, there were hundreds of theories on how it would end. The one that hit me hardest was one that demonstrated the effects of attention focusing pills. The strip didn’t end on this note, but the point of this mystery author still hits home.
Flash forward 19 years, to the day that I read about Hyper and Deep Attention. What bothers me most about this essay is that there isn’t an opinion. Nowhere in this article is there an opinion or a fact that I can rub against, ruffling everyone’s feathers and producing discussion. The worst part about this is that modes of attention and effects of media are so freaking interesting. She paints these two perfect pictures of two different methods of learning or attention and doesn’t give us anything to do besides agree. Its a paper that calls an issue to attention, yet it only functions as a basic definition of the issue.
How does literacy play into this? Simple, attention determines level of interaction with the world of cognitive thought. When engaging deep attention readers are able to concentrate wholly on the task at hand while sacrificing attention to the environment around themselves. This means one thing. An uninterrupted stream of consciousness and understanding to that wonderful world of upper level literal thought. This allows for the reader to quickly internalize and interact with the texts and to develop better thoughts. I’m not knocking Hyper attention just yet, but the benefits of Deep attention on creating that upper level of literate understanding is too exciting to jeopardize. Unlike Hayles, I lean towards this type of thought. It not only creates better experiences, but like she mentions early on, is the mark of a civilized education. On top of this it allows for imaginary worlds to develop. Not the kind that someone else prepares for you, but the imaginary world that you create on your own, from your own ideas, with your own rules.
Hyper attention on the other hand slinks into this topic right at the end and attempts to validate itself. Multitasking is great in the non-literate world. It ensures that you can prepare multiple parts of your dinner at once or other shallow thought tasks. Now this doesn’t mean its useless, but Hyper attention has no right to even be remotely discussed as educationally relevant. You know what you get when you rush your ideas? You get rotten ideas. The kind of ideas that lead to broken ribs or mild concussions.
Literacy isn’t for those unwilling to experience it wholly. True literacy is for those who are willing to work with an idea and get lost in it. To sit in a bed for the entire day daydreaming. So you can keep your loud music and constant distractions, I prefer to explore.
P.S. I’ll leave this here for anyone who is looking for a good cry.
While you make some very interesting points in this post, I would like to stand up for Hayles. One important thing that I feel that the class was overlooking is the fact that this article was a scientific report. These reports aren’t meant to try to to prove a point or make a stand, they are simply there to show the researchers findings. While this article did talk about Hyper activity in a bit more detail, it was only because that’s what she was researching on.
I feel like it’s very easy to start viewing something in a particular was just because it’s what you’re used to. I’ve actually really enjoyed the past several readings we’ve done because they’ve all been presented in a fairly concise scientific format and it was easier for me to follow. In contrast, I get a bit bored/confused whenever someone just starts reciting a very long, on sided narrative to me. I find it much easy to be given empirical data and to make my own decision for it, rather than just have someone tell me theirs.
So this post isn’t about whether or not I agree or disagree with any of your points, I just wanted to shed some light on where articles like these are coming from and how they’re simply a means of conveying data and allowing you to come up with your own opinion.
It’s good that Hayles remained non-committal–most people use both of these modes depending on the situation. Her point wasn’t to promote one type of thinking over the other, although she does promote the idea of providing more avenues to success for hyper thinkers, her article was written more the acknowledge the rise in hyper thought in the upcoming generation (at the time of writing).
When I read this, it seemed to state the obvious, a clear reflection of current experiences of students and the practices of teachers and professors. It was published seven years ago, at that time, maybe what was being said wasn’t as readily known. When you’re the person starting the discussion, it’s difficult to come out strongly on a particular side, especially when introducing a novel concept that requires it’s own arguments and period of adjustment.