Linda Stone, On Continuous Partial Attention

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[00:00:00.95] Linda Stone, Apple, Microsoft legend back in the days, now former of the theory Continuous Partial Attention. Tell me about that. What is it?

[00:00:12.11] Continuous Partial Attention is about the kind of attention that we've been paying the last 20 years with all of these different devices and possibilities that allow us to be always on 24/7, responding to everything, working around the clock.

[00:00:35.48] I see trends unfold as a dialectic where there's thesis, antithesis. And so Continuous Partial Attention, when you take it to an extreme, makes you overwhelmed, unfulfilled, exhausted, and you start thinking what would be better? And you realize what would be better is engaged attention. That would make me feel good. So you take what you've been doing to an extreme, and you start yearning for the opposite of that. And then you start moving in that direction. It's why we find ourselves taking yoga classes, doing meditation, wanting to turn our devices off here and there more than before.

[00:01:23.16] The most important trend you see right now, what is it?

[00:01:27.82] That people are going to really want quality of life. They're going to make buying decisions. They're going to make life decisions around what answers the question what brings me quality of life. It used to be when people wanted to go buy something they would say, I want ease of use. Which cellphone is the easiest to use? Which TV is the easiest to use? But now people are going to say quality of life is what I want. Do I need this at all? Does having this bring quality of life? Or if I want something, which thing is going to be something that brings me quality of life? That's the bar. So every person developing a product or a service, or marketing a product or service, needs to figure out how to tell the story of how what they have offers quality of life to consumers.