Chapter 2:
How We Watch
On Continuous Partial Attention, Linda Stone
For all their ease and convenience, the digital tools now woven into our everyday life also present us with certain challenges — foremost among them, says Linda Stone, a challenge to our ability to concentrate. Taking stock of a 24/7, always-on culture that leaves us feeling “overwhelmed, unfulfilled, and exhausted,” Stone makes the case for a new set of experiences that allows us to slow down and see each other for who we truly are. A veteran of the computer software industry, Linda Stone now works as a writer and consultant.
Discussion and Writing Questions
After watching On Continuous Partial Attention, consider the questions below.
Discussion:
1. Take a moment to reflect on the title here. Is continuous partial attention a term that captures your daily life? Can you think of examples from your own experience in which a reliance on digital or social media transformed your attention into something “partial”?
2. Stone argues that “engaged attention” is better than “continuous partial attention.” How do you define engaged attention? What, in your view, would engaged attention look like? How would it be different than partial attention? And what, if anything, would make it preferable?
3. What is the "dialectic" (thesis/antithesis) that Stone sees for our current trend of continuous partial attention? In what ways do people find themselves responding to this opposing extreme of continuous partial attention?
Writing:
4. The most important trend we will see in the future, declares Stone, involves the search for experiences that “answer the question: What brings me quality of life?” Choose an example of an experience that fits the general definition Stone offers here. Then write an essay in which you explain the ways this experience offers a counterpoint or solution to the frenetic, “always-on” culture Stone believes currently prevails. What is it specifically about this experience that provides a greater quality of life?
5. “Every person developing a product or service, or marketing a product or service,” Stone declares, “needs to figure out how to tell the story of how what they have offers quality of life.” Put yourself in the position of a person marketing a new product. Then write an essay about an ad campaign that would tell a story convincing enough to get consumers to buy your product. What strategies would you use to best present and promote your product? How would you make the argument that this product offers “quality of life”?
6. Virginia Heffernan (“The Attention-Span Myth,” 113) is also interested in exploring the ways that digital culture is affecting our ability to pay attention. How does Heffernan’s argument compare with Stone’s? Do you think Stone would share Heffernan’s belief that concerns over our eroding attention span are a “myth”? Why or why not?