Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Attention Span

I think our attention span is spiraling down into ever tinier fragments of time. Now I’m tired of this topic; I’m going to think about something else. What were those hockey scores? Has it started raining yet? I think I’ll make spaghetti for supper. No, wait. I was trying to turn my attention to the topic of span. Oh shoot. What was that topic again? Must remember to gas up the car. Isn’t some kid somewhere at some lesson waiting for a ride somewhere? Okay, now where was I? Oh yeah, I suspect something is happening to our attention span. Now where is the lid to the jam jar? I thought I put it right over….. ooh, look at the pretty picture on the calendar!

It’s like we’ve fallen into some sort of jumble of societal dementia. No one thought can last for more than a few seconds before caving in to the centrifugal force of the next bigger-better-faster thought that comes busting into consciousness. Or maybe it’s just a plain ordinary thought that meanders in and sets up shop. In any event, thought number one is deposed.

Researchers who have a higher attention span than the rest of us have figured out a few things. They say that the average attention span for adults is twenty minutes. What a lot of hooey. The average attention span lasts for the duration of that golden period that lies between strings of TV commercials. And this holds true only if someone blows something up, or guns down five people, or takes off their shirt. Failure to produce these essential components puts the attention span at about three minutes for adults, and three seconds for teenagers.

Rock videos probably changed the global neural network for length of attention span. This is how they work. You insert yourself into the video slingshot and hang on for dear life as they pummel your bleeding eyes with rocket-speed scene changes. While your neurons have their stubby pencils out still trying to record the first scene, the video blasts on through scenes two through twenty-five. You are still less than twenty seconds into the video. Plaster your brain with a few hours of this and then sit down to write a thrilling essay on how Shakespeare makes use of classical allusions. Gee, this is hard. Perhaps a video game would settle me down.

Advertisers know a secret they have kept carefully hidden from us. Focused attention span endures for only eight fleeting seconds. After that we look elsewhere. This gives them the appropriate rhythm they need to ping-pong us with their products, leaving us conquered by what amounts to attention spam. Now that I have revealed their secret they will probably hunt me down and force feed me frozen home-style deep dish pizza until I die of pepperoni poisoning. Of course, if I can distract them for eight seconds, I can probably make my escape.

Now where was it I left my other sock?