
Continuous Partial Attention - laurentdc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_partial_attention
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voidhorse
All our tools promote this approach to information consumption. Just today I
took some time to seriously reconsider my use of electronics—for a couple of
months I was able to sustain a very disciplined use of tech: no picking up the
phone unless I have an explicit reason, and I have first questioned that
reason. No starting an internet browser right away when using my laptop, no
phone on the toilet, in bed, etc. But sure I’ve lapsed and find myself wasting
tons of time once again...like commenting on hacker news when I could be
thinking about serious problems. Oh well. Time to try again.

It’d be nice if our tools promoted disciplined, focused use instead of
combatting focus. The internet is a huge component in this.

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allthecybers
Good books on this are 'Digital Minimalism' and 'How to break up with your
phone'. I get worried that at some point toddlers growing up with tablets from
day one will be unable to function as in normal society and most interactions
will be completely made up of people staring at a screens.

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colechristensen
Can you really drill down into the specifics for why that is a bad future?

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onion2k
Social anxiety disorders like 'telephone phobia' are far more common now then
they were a decade ago, and while there hasn't been enough study around
precisely why that's the case the leading theory is that social media is
making people more prone to anxiety in general. That has a negative impact on
how effectively we communicate, and communication is important in pretty much
everything.

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coldtea
Another thing could be inventing anxieties where none exist -- e.g. people
just don't want to be bothered to use the phone, and "doctors" of psychology
etc are all too ok to call it a "phobia".

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pergadad
While an interesting concept this just seems to be a term made up by a
blogger, with the Wikipedia article solely existing to link to a few sites by
the blogger and others rehashing the concept.

This is not a scientific term, nor does there seem to be any research on what
this is and whether the premises are right. E.g. the 'multi-tasking' research
found very clearly that there's no such thing as multi-tasking, rather we
switch rapidly between tasks and this context-switching is not very efficient.
I don't see how 'continuous partial attention' would be possible in light of
this.

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coldtea
> _This is not a scientific term_

There was never a bar that a term or concept had to be "scientific" to be
valuable, interesting, enlightening and so on...

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hirundo
> CPA is an automatic process, motivated only by "a desire to be a live node
> on the network" ... CPA is motivated not by productivity but by
> connectivity.

It's about detecting predators before they eat you or prey before you starve
or mates before your genes leave the pool. Modern networks are just a modern
source of that data.

We're hard wired for CPA by a billion generations.

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foobarbecue
A billion? So since before the big bang... (I agree with your statement
otherwise.)

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ALittleLight
The further back you go in the evolutionary chain the shorter generations tend
to be. I doubt a billion generations of bacteria would carry us back to the
big bang.

I also take this idea, that predator detection predates humanity and goes deep
into our ancestral roots, to be the commenter's point.

~~~
foobarbecue
Good point. I was thinking humans, which was silly.

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sp332
Related classic video: "The User is Drunk"
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r2CbbBLVaPk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r2CbbBLVaPk)

