I think all our gadgets today are great, but they do change our lives – we’re so mobile, split-focused, cyber-centric – that we’re squeezing out room for “pause” – for conversation, for reflective thought. That’s the problem. We need to re-balance – and particularly nurture our powers of attention….
In my book, I talk about the costs of living distracted. When we aren’t fully aware or split our focus all the time, we essentially don’t go deeply, in thought or in relationships. We become a skimming culture – and that’s dangerous. But new discoveries related to attention can help – for instance, attention can be trained! That’s exciting news for us all.
Maggie Jackson’s insight is much more important than most of us will give credit. These gadgets and “communication” devices do encourage the shallowest of “thought” — really reaction. We do not go deep. In fact, most important of all for Jackson, we may well be losing the capacity for depth — depth of thought, feeling, experience.
It is in government, business, and religion’s detractors’ interest to kill the tender nerve to which Jackson speaks. Kendall did us a great service in this posting.
It would be interesting to see if all electronic devices could be outlawed in grade 1-6 elementary classroom and concentrate on teaching the youngsters to use that wondeful God-given computer located between their ears.