I’m pretty certain Google has destroyed my attention span.
Google is my browser’s homepage, and when I click for Firefox to load, I expect Google to pop up instantly. This set a dangerous precedent when I then do a search, and again expect the results to be accurate to what I’m looking for, and to appear instantly.
Now I appreiciate that the results webpages won’t be as quick as Google is, but anything longer than 5-10 seconds, and I’m going to hit ‘Back’ and try another result. That’s a pretty strong contrast to a decade ago when I was happy to kill a couple of minutes playing Minesweeper while I waited for Yahoo! to load up on Dial Up.
Similarly, I find reading articles and blogs online to be much easier than reading long drawn articles on the internet or print – if an article goes more than 5-6 paragraphs, I tend to find myself skim reading to get the jist of it.
That could well be a sign of my own lack of attention span, but I have the feeling that other people will relate to this – the internet presents us a quick and easy way to gain access to the knowledge we want to know, primarily through search tools.
My musing is whether this would apply within Second Life – a platform which is based strongly on visual components.
SL has the issue with load times – I find if a sim hasn’t loaded after a couple of minutes, I’ll get bored and move on. When building a sim, I rarely use a palette of more than 10 textures, as I’m aware once the sim owner adds their own pieces in, the place will have a longer load time.
The shorter the load time, the faster a visitor can access what they’re looking for. It’s part of the age where speed is a necessity, and people don’t expect to be kept waiting.
A hair store in SL which I visited recently blindsighted me on this. I tp’d in and waited for the sim to load, but all I saw was my avatar stood in shallow sea water, and lots of floating panels with hair products. It took me a good few minutes to realise there was actually no store build, and that I had fully rezzed a while ago – in a metaverse where we expect fancy, high quality builds, it was refreshing to find someone who had put convenience first.
But my ponder is if this impatience is going to make us stupider? Will our demand for access to only information that we require lead to us abandon the “deep reading” attained from the printing press? The pressure for immediacy and efficiency could well sacrifice the imagery and deep mental connection we make with what we see and read, instead just becoming information decoders.
Essentially what we are presented with is a form of artificial intelligence – the tools we are using to gain access to information are getting better at knowing what we want, and where we can find it as well as being quicker and more efficient about it.
When online, we need a purpose – just sitting and contemplating what to do on the internet or in Second Life is being shunned. We are presented with a wide array of activities and information to serve our procrastination, and little time for thought and ambiguity.
The faster we surf the web, or teleport from sim to sim, the more opportunities are available for commercial interests to pick up on our trends, and aim advertising at us. It’s in the economic interest of these companies that we don’t use the internet at a slow pace, and engage in concentrated thoughts. More clicks and more hits equates to more money.
Perhaps I’m just overanalysing this. It’s only natural to ponder the worst of a situation when new technologies present themselves. Socrates complained that the written word would destroy mankind’s ability to carry knowledge in their head, and the failure to exercise their memory would lead them to be forgetful. He argued that the advent of written word would lead to people being able to give the perception of intelligence, but without understanding what they’ve read, they would simply be ignorant. Essentially filled with the conceit of wisdom, as opposed to real wisdom.
Socrates wasn’t far wrong either – but he failed to realise that the sharing of ideas through the written word would spur creativity and allow for new ideas and knowledge to develop.
It should be noted that deep reading doesn’t equate to deep thinking – the internet may give us the power to find information concisely, but that doesn’t mean we don’t ponder it. Indeed, we think about ways that information in Second Life can be presented better, and we have the tools to be able to express our ideas differently.
I think it’s important that we don’t take everything at face value, and that we think, create and share ideas – don’t accept something you see in SL as it is. Know that you can think about ways it could be improved, and that you can develop and implement the skills to do so, or share the ideas with someone else who can.
I think too many people in Second Life are taking things as they are, and not communicating their ideas. We don’t want a society where the avatar feels scripted to accept what is there. As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, we run the risk of our own intelligence flattening into artificial intelligence.
Questions things. Ponder how something can be better. Think about things you see and interact with, and how they enhance your experience. Don’t just live an existence in Second Life – share your ideas, change it and make a difference.
I am fully aware on the irony at the length of this article, and that you most likely skim read it. It’s okay.
Marx Dudek on January 2, 2009
TL;DR.
Miriam Woyseck on January 2, 2009
I did the same thing in that shop, and felt intensely silly. I was also quite alarmed to find that I found the lack of a floor creepy. Must spend some time as a floating cube or something, to re-establish my sense of unreality.
Crap Mariner on January 2, 2009
I tried to read all of this, but I saw something in the sidebar and clicked on it and..
Vint on January 2, 2009
Is an article really long, I find myself printing it and taking notes. (Poor tree, I know, but the back can still serve as notepaper for shopping lists!
)
Rosie Shark on January 2, 2009
LOL yea interesting to note, I got distracted by yahoo while reading
I can’t blame technology, though! I think I’ve been ADD for a llllooooonnngggg time 
Tymmerie Thorne on January 2, 2009
Prad – this article was wayyyyyyyy more than 5-6 paragraphs long. So I just skimmed it to get the jist of it.
Prad Prathivi on January 2, 2009
Everyone’s a comedian :p
Siobhan Taylor on January 2, 2009
I kind of agree, to be honest. We all read a lot less than we used to, seeking entertainment up front. We watch movies instead of reading novels. How many of us learn to read music? Instead we rely on other people’s interpretation.
Google’s a good metaphor too, as is SL, though I think we’d all love for sims to load instantly… but I’d settle for a nice teleport animation or something to cover loading times.
We’ll see. It’s 2009 now, and I still don’t have my flying car.
Whimsy Winx on January 2, 2009
mmmmmm….cookies
Angie Mornington on January 2, 2009
Branding and strategic advertising are even more crucial as the internet continues to evolve. How do you immediately entice people so that they want to read the second paragraph? Or click on that second page? Or become fully immersed in your product? There is a fine line between enticement and bombardment, the difference between pulling someone in and smacking them with too much information. And given the current economic situation, companies are going to have to figure out how to deal with our short attention spans more effectively if they want to sustain a profit.
Kristi Maurer on January 2, 2009
Sorry Prathivi, you wrote too much, so I just read the comments.
Viola Gemini on January 2, 2009
The times online has a great great article on this, well worth a read to confirm some of your fears and reassure yourself at the same time
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article4417509.ece
Rrish on January 3, 2009
As you know, I teach Reading and Language Arts to middle school / tweens / 12-14 year olds. It’s a phenomenon that teachers are noticing world wide, our students do not have the attenton span to read long articles, chapter books, etc.
I require my students to read for at least 10 minutes every day, one thing, one sitting. And the must document it, and get a parent’s signature. They must also bring a book to read to my classroom, we occasionally have down time. If they don’t have a book, they have to grab one off my bookshelf. They will grab a book that looks pretty, read 1 paragraph then put it back because it’s “too hard!” or “too boring!”
We bemoan the lack of attentionspan, the inability to read one thing for more than a minute or two. But we also recognize, that a lot of these students are good at reading for content…skimming short articles to get the main idea. And where did they pick that up from? Mainly from the internet!
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I see both sides of the issue. It’s not all good or all bad. It’s simply finding a balance between two opposite sides of the pendulum.
mm on January 3, 2009
This is the longest thing I read today! Something about that cookie…..
Ann Otoole on January 3, 2009
The increasingly slow load times of Second Life clients published by Linden Lab are indeed a problem that is destroying Second Life. This is a problem that drives deep into the heart of Second Life.
The slowing load times are causding people to give up and walk away. Gray Life is not interesting. Since everyone but Linden Lab is affected by this could it be some odd thing related to their new fiber net? They have great response times on a fiber ring while us po folk on the cruddy old broadband internet going through 16 hops are not entitled to a reasonable experience? I think Klingdon needs to move the development teams down the road a ways… Like to Kansas… If they can’t figure this out. Maybe Kansas for the San Francisco lifestylers would be serious motivation.
In addition to the load time increases there is the problem of texture reloading constantly which is resulting in Second Life being an immense internet resource hog. With the ISPs implementing byte transfer caps the idea of Second Life being a daily thing for most people will become a thing of the past. For content creators this is likely to be the end of their brief careers since they will be unable to keep the content pipe running.
Linden Lab does not appear to take this problem seriously. Otherwise they would have a team on it making it the number one viewer priority.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8503 is listed as a showstopper assigned to the bit bucket account called workingonit linden yet there appears to be no serious involvement by Linden Lab other than the usual “It must be your fault” type comments.
Given it seems obvious that Linden Lab has no interest in fixing their viewer I am beginning to suspect they really are trying to destroy the entire thing. If that is the case they should quit now and be honorable about it. I find it difficult to consider the possibility of a lack of skills and knowledge at LL (I mean come on they are good programmers) so it must be something like Klingdon gave the viewer project to a flash website company so there are no longer any resources assigned. I wonder if they really think Second Life can run under flash lol.
Anyway the 6 second rule still applies. If we don’t see stuff happening within 6 seconds on arrival in a sim then it is unsatisfactory and changes need to be made to get the talent and tools they have refocused back on the problem. Or explain why it will not be fixed. I think they owe us that sort of status update communication on a regular basis.
Ann Otoole on January 3, 2009
I just ran some tests. Looks like the new Imprudence viewer is seriously better than Linden Lab’s code. I guess if people want to have a good Second Life experience without the gray life textures never load effect then they will have to use non Linden Lab code to do it.
Faerie on January 4, 2009
Someone in RL recently (and I’m sad I can’t remember who) said: “the internet gives us easy access to information, but having information is not the same as having knowledge and having knowledge does not automatically lead to having wisdom”.