Attention is the Fundamental Literacy
Attention is the fundamental literacy. Every second I spend online, I make decisions about where to spend my attention. Should I devote any mindshare at all to this comment or that headline? — a question I need to answer each time an attractive link catches my eye. Simply becoming aware of the fact that life online requires this kind of decision-making was my first step in learning to tune a fundamental filter on what I allow into my head — a filter that is under my control only if I practice controlling it. The second level of decision-making is whether I want to open a tab on my browser because I decided that this item will be worth my time tomorrow. The third decision: do I bookmark this site because I am interested in the subject and might want to reference it at some unspecified future time? Online attention-taming begins with what meditators call “mindfulness” — the simple, self-influencing awareness of how attention wanders.
Notes:
Life online requires properly allocating our attention to maximize our productivity.
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Triples
Perspectives on Online Attention
Attention is the Fundamental Literacy > Comparison > Smaller Fragments of Information Command AttentionKevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold discuss managing their attention spans in the online world.