Attention!! infotention!!

Attention!!!!

Infotention? 

Is this term really just about 'information' and 'attention'?

Or does it have something to do with multitasking, procrastination, seeking or more? 

Let's find out what it really is... Here comes a simple example:

from http://jensustathought.blogspot.com.au/2008_04_01_archive.html

What can you see from this image? A large cup or two faces?

This image illustrates the concept of infotention, what can you see within this image? a cup or two faces? It shows what colour or shape you pay more attention to when you see either of them first.
      

The reformation of the structure is now turning our world to an information economy, which it enhances the cyberspace as net is overflowing with information. This is a shift in dominating our society with mass production in practice. For me, INFOTENTION is regarded as a fast food principle, fast and convenient, we can easily get it but not healthy of getting it too much, the larger amount we get, unknowingly the more fat we stuff into our body just like how brain will be dysfunctioning by gathering too much of information. The point is why information is that appealing to us? Is it just because we cannot avoid seeing them? Panksepp suggests such motivation is from the emotional state such as curiosity, interest, foraging, engagement, craving and finally it comes with SEEKING.   

Look around and think what you are seeing, the chairs? table? TV? wardrobe? THINK AGAIN, you are actually receiving the data and information out there, from your naked eyes, you perceive from what you really see and turn them into your data. Here, it's all about perception...and human is seeking perception wherever we go, we cannot avoid or stop doing this...This is just one typical example of the concept of our refreshing memory from our searching engines, like Google, Safari, Firefox, our brain is another searching engine itself. Apart from the seeking from reality, nowadays, we focus more on media use and hence it leads us to have more desire of gaining information to the point of we are even wondering about our sanity, how much obsession we get from information...ARE WE DROWNING IN THE SEA OF INFORMATION? 

This hyperactivity effectively applies to every piece of information we get from net-based communication because the constant information has further extended our capacity to accommodate the data by remodeling our brains to take it. At the same time, our attention span becomes shorter than ever since the modern world bombards us with stimuli, most of us will go with what trend brings to us, the updates of texts, tweets, youtube videos, status update on facebook, new products ad also capture our eyes as easy as it is. Our growing concern about these endless interruption firstly will cause the change of the base of our behaviour. The overflowing information persistently affects our productivity from our performance of accomplishing a task in a longer time before. Why is that? we have drawn our attention to the social networks, our media devices produce more interesting information unlike the banal ones we are doing, especially for teens, not surprisingly knowing, we are even more easily to be distracted. Just by saying that, back to the term INFOTENTION again, information does need our attention, but because of that, it has triggered our procrastination to do something more important. 

Procrastination is the product of multitasking. Teens these days see multitasking as their second nature. As if multitasking should be a skill that the teens need to acquire for adapting this so-called 'information society'. In other words, multitasking is the representation of we have distributed uneven effort to each task we are doing instead of putting our full effort to finish the most necessary one. So what makes us worry is that too much information could be the freedom from necessity and that we would drastically be losing our balance to our time management.   

What follows next? we then become not mindfully deciding which task we should finish first because we have already been having continuous partial attention to everything we do. Also, paying too much information of the media uses would unintentionally make our bodies being compromised in some way. For instance, we still have more concern with the status update on facebook even though we have tiny bit of time waiting in the queue, such behaviour can be understood from what Linda Stone says in the interview, she states that our mind is engaged and our body is 'hanging out'. 

However, for Linda Stone herself, multitasking might not completely a bad thing, a busy person like her finds it more productive by multitasking. Momentarily, she needs to move between tasks rapidly, she can manage to do the activities well, hence, we conclude, infotention is not always create negative effect. It does create positivity for some users like Linda Stone. 

To say that to critically engage with the idea of infotention, it should not be seen as one-sided, instead, this ongoing process is needed to break down for analyzing as it incorporates a range of human's temporary desire. Therefore, the new form of technical logic that have made us, the users as the most saleable asset. In addition, we take pictures and post them on the internet for file sharing with others as we want to get attention from the imagined world to see us image. So define this, we are just another form of infotention on the internet as well? 

NOW THINK AGAIN, if infotention hierarchically keeps invading into our lives, what are we going to end up with?  

ATTENTION!! NOW IT'S TIME TO PUT SOME LIMITS to our actions!!

Reference

Henry, J(2010), Multitasking and Continuous Partial Attention: An interview with Linda Stone

(Part one), Confession of an ACA-Fan, <http://henryjenkins.org/2010/11/multitasking_and_continuous_pa.html>

Kinsley, S (2010), The technics of Attention, Paying Attention, <http://payingattention.org/2010/10/12/the-technics-of-attention/>

Goldhaber. M. H (1997), Attention Shoppers!, Wired, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/es_attention.html>
O'Malley, M(2010), Attention and information, The Aporetic, <http://theaporetic.com/?p=228>
Temple, J(2011), All those tweets, apps, updates may drain brain, San Fransciso Chronicle, April 17, <http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/All-those-tweets-apps-updates-may-drain-brain-2374725.php>

Yoffe, E(2009), Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous, Slate, <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2009/08/seeking.html>

image:
http://jensustathought.blogspot.com.au/2008_04_01_archive.html