“Time is money”—we can't afford to waste it. It is careless to become distracted or lost in thought. When we have free or empty time, we fill it with checking emails, scrolling through social media feeds, rearranging our phone apps, or, more responsibly, revising our to-do list.
Saving time is a more serious matter on the job, prompting creative solutions to maximize productivity. A century ago, the visionary writer and noted inventor Hugo Gernsback launched "the Isolator" to protect against all possible distractions. This invention may have been slightly ironic, but Gernsback believed fiction inspired scientific progress. Regardless, it perfectly conveys preconceptions and fears today. [1]
Attention has overtaken money as the most coveted economic resource. Algorithms are advertising on steroids since 90% of content is forgotten. Newspaper articles are shorter, and the time required to read them is indicated. Editors tell journalists to keep stories under 500 words. "Militants of minimalism" insist on brevity that serves the bottom line. [2] Daydreaming and absent-minded introspection are bad form unless, as with most tech firms, scheduled to boost performance.
Today's threat isn't outright distraction but attention on demand and creativity on call. The imperative for attention threatens to collapse into its opposite. The same is true in consumerism and mass entertainment: by perpetually trying to attract the spectators' attention, the result is dispersing it.
Anxiety about "attention" has a long history. Socrates blamed the alphabet. He rebelled against the invention of writing, believing it would weaken our minds and memory, distract us with excessive information, and oversimplify the development of ideas. When Gutenberg developed movable type, religious authorities feared losing control of the Bible. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus expressed frustration with the overwhelming number of new books. John Calvin wrote of readers wandering into a "confused forest" of print. Similar fears were intensified by the Industrial Revolution when machine-made ink and paper made books widely accessible to anyone.
Is our problem today a growing attention overload or a growing distraction deficit? With multiple search engines and browser tools providing instant summaries and analysis, distraction has become predictable. What's far out has become commonplace and almost dull. We're so used to being surprised that not much is surprising.
Strange discoveries about life and the universe are no stranger than our own madcap behavior. That octopuses have three hearts and blue blood, and we could be living in multiple universes is no more unusual than the mind-boggling behavior and boundless duplicity that are daily headlines. Hugo Gernsback's "Isolator" is the evening news. We can seem distracted while, in reality, we are hyper-focused. True distraction would be a relief.
Simone Weil distinguished between "attached" attention and "free" or creative attention. Attached attention prevents us from paying attention to anything else. Free attention fosters a state of mind where creativity can flourish without constraint.
In Montaigne's words, "There is a marvelous grace in letting thoughts be carried away at the pleasure of the wind." True brilliance often arises during the mind’s wanderings. Distraction could be the best attention. Truth can be off to the side — beside the point.
Notes and reading
[1] The Isolator—Hugo Gernsback founded the magazine Science and Invention to showcase scientific experimentation and new inventions/inventors. He also launched the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, devoted solely to what he referred to as “scientifiction.” - “The Isolator,” The Vintage News (Dec. 22, 2015).
[2] “Militants of minimalism” - from Ed Simon, “Baroque, Purple, and Beautiful: In Praise of the Long, Complicated Sentence” - Literary Hub (April 10, 2023). Simon is the Executive Director of Belt Media Collaborative, the Editor-in-Chief for Belt Magazine, and an emeritus staff writer at The Millions.
“Are attention spans getting shorter (and does it matter)?” - David Pogue, CBS News (October 17, 2023). Pogue is a correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning. - “We’ve always been distracted” - Joe Stadolnik, Aeon (February 2, 2023). Stadolnik is an independent researcher, writer, and editor.
Socrates et al. - Robert Darnton, The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future (2009). Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic librarian (Harvard).
Simone Weil - Letter to a Priest (Routledge International Edition, 2002). Attention does not require mental tension or concentration and instead involves a form of reception—being open, nonjudgmental, and receptive to the world.
“We have lost ‘the long, slow, lingering gaze’…” - Byung-Chul Han, cultural theorist, The Crisis of Narration (2024), 1-15.
Montaigne - in The Plenitude of Distraction - Marina van Zuylen (2018). Van Zuylen is a professor of French and comparative literature (Bard College).
The Politics of Curiosity: Alternatives to the Attention Economy - edited by Enrico Campo and Yves Citton (April 26, 2024 - Kindle - segments now online). Campo is a research fellow of Sociology in the Department of Philosophy (University of Milan); Citton is a Professor of Literature and Media (University of Paris).
Dead Time: Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity - Elissa Marder (2001). Marder was a founding Emory Psychoanalytic Studies Program member and teaches at Emory and London Graduate School.
“A New Theory of Distraction” - Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker (June 16, 2015). Rothman is the ideas editor of newyorker.com.