Tag: brain

The Pleasure and Pain of Speed. Nautilus article that looks at whether there are biological thresholds to how fast our brain can process information. Toward the end it considers whether these thresholds are static or whether we’re adapting to faster processing speeds over time.

The attention-span myth

Virginia Heffernan disputes the traditional notion of an attention-span. Good to see someone confront Nicholas Carr’s notion that technology causes brain damage.

I’m surprised that anyone ventures so far into this thicket of sophistry. I get stuck much earlier in the equation. Everyone has an attention span: really? And really again: 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?

If material is engaging people will focus on it, regardless of what their supposed attention-spans are.