Aug. 01 2010

ambient attention.

what follows is just a quick draft of something i wrote on my phone after arriving in detroit earlier in the week.  it was probably 830a and i had been awake since 330a.  i was waiting for a colleague’s flight to land and drinking an aforementioned americano…

thinking abt design & attention. watching ppl photo/video fountain in dtw. goals are set w/ assumption of 100% attention. what abt ambient attention? not looking at the fountain and just hearing it leaves a complete different impression.

cute, right?  lots of opiates rushing to my head, time to kill and an obvious attempt at distracting myself for a bit gets me to realize a design theory that (i’m not sure) is prevalent in actual education about design.

want to really know why i’m essentially marginalizing myself in this post?

not looking at the fountain just made it sound like a urinal row in the men’s bathroom of a football game.  full-on pissing, essentially all day long.

told you.

p.s:  i’m into the neistat brothers now.  thanks thea.

Feb. 22 2010

Walking in the woods makes you smarter

bobulate:

Seth Fischer on giving your brain a needed break, or “attention restorative theory:”

When you go for a walk in, say, the woods, you’re using a more subtle “involuntary attention” when looking at things like sunsets or squirrels. When you’re in the city, you’re always avoiding that asshole bicyclist, stepping over that pile of human poo, or spending your brain power ignoring the Rottweiler barking at you in the window. Because your “direct attention” is always focused, your prefrontal cortex is always on overdrive, and you end up not being as good at things that you need “direct attention” for, like learning at school or solving problems you haven’t faced before or resolving conflict. In other words, if you don’t take some time to look at a sunset, your brain never gets a break, and that’s not good.

Before you take a hike, see also: “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature“ or the slightly less complex, “The Cognitive Benefits of Nature.”

to everyone who asks why i don’t live in new york city, here is my proverbial middle finger/your answer.

Dec. 29 2009

The End of the 00s: The Hunt for lonelygirl15, by Richard Rushfield | The Awl

No one is actually listening anymore: One of the great frustrations of the lonelygirl hunt was the fact that, despite having her face plastered everywhere in media, for weeks and weeks no clue about her identity emerged. How was this possible that no one had seen her? Well, it was possible because, despite everyone on earth in one way or another seeing her face (certainly everyone who used the internet), no one was actually paying attention.

as you can tell i’ve been frustratingly retrospective for the past few days.  i want to do some pretty significant things in my personal life this year while keeping my professional life on track.  the walls are just closing a bit faster.  shame that they won’t stop until i kick it.

my hopes for this week?  that i close it out with a clear head, empty “to do” list, clean room, healthy finances, initial strides towards better health and a clear framework for avoiding anxiety.

oh yeah, 10 years went by.  recognizing that the largest deficit society is facing for the next 10 is our lapse in really caring is probably what this piece frames the best.  if you’re looking for some closure, the awl has you covered.

Oct. 28 2009

merlin:

Letters of Note: Onward!

The important thing is this: Do not be discouraged by this or any other momentary setback. The road is long; the struggle must go on.

This is just so well done.

Finding a way to be both kind, supportive, and honest is one of the hardest things in the world. Especially at scale.

If this doesn’t seem hard to you right now, just wait. In the same way that crap web hosts oversell the bandwidth they’ve promised their customers, our various social networks, both formal and informal, encourage us to way oversell on familiarity and assumed attention. And, more importantly, they exist primarily to enable unlimited access without doing anything to express, produce, or negotiate a shared expectation.

Viz: Imagine a day when every one of those friends (contributors? publishers? aspiring anybodies?) all need you at exactly the same moment, and that each cares intensely about how and when you respond personally. Heck, maybe they even judge you based solely on how well you help them, without knowing how many other folks expect precisely the same treatment. A pebble is just a pebble, right? Exactly.

That’s the day you realize what Mr. Junker appears to have learned. That, sometimes, the best kindness you can pay someone is to be candid about what they can expect from you. But, yes, oh gosh yes absolutely, it does help to be very kind about it.

Because every word matters when a stranger offers you his pebble.

(Man. Somebody should write a book about this stuff.)

[via]

emphasis mine.

Aug. 19 2009

Inbox Zero

“i’m done committing.”

looking forward to this one - which is rare.  good looks harper (debbie, sis, et al).

Jun. 16 2009

it’s a shame

tratlee:

So i went to the movie theater with my sister tonight to watch the hangover.  Hilarious movie by the way.  What got on my nerves though is the fact that people talk so much in the theater, myself included.  People are talking, cell phones are out, and i can literally feel the lack of connection between the viewer and whatever is on the huge ass screen that STILL can’t command your attention even when it’s completley dark in the room and nonsense is coming out of the speakers.  I feel like it should stress someone out when they are constantly checking their phone 50 times a movie or otherwise.  I love the jokes in comedies like the hangover but there were so many funny parts that it’s all a blur.  There’s no build up, there’s no quality.  I’ve also got a feeling that if whoever made the movie didn’t put 927509 jokes all in a row, everyones attention span would shrivel up and d- OH A TEXT! yesssssss

who let the dogs out…

May. 27 2009

The Real Time Web is a Beautiful Distraction

syntheticpubes:

These media play off of a very real psychological factor known as operant conditioning, the addictive need to return over and over in hopes of a reward.

The ability to pay attention, focus and strategically disconnect will be a winning discipline of the next generation.

yup.