People often argue that we have too much information and too little attention; that this is a condition of being “modern.” But the opposite may be true: that attention is a human constant and that it constantly seeks new forms. Where there’s “surplus attention” we always come up with things to occupy it.
Was the past simpler, with less information to distract the mind and less to worry about? That can’t really be true: there’s nothing simple about farming and the natural world is full of information we’ve lost the capacity to discern.
Here’s an image of pastoral life, taken early in the twentieth century in North Dakota. Rustic simplicity, except that the farmer in charge has labor management problems–who are these workers, how is he compensating them? He has to manage the horses–how is their health? Do they need feeding and watering? He’s got to get the harvested wheat stored properly: he’s checking the weather all the time–just imagine how much information is involved, in an age before reliable forecasts, in guessing the weather! He’s scanning the crop itself, to see how much he lost to insects or disease. He’s got a good idea of crop prices in Chicago and whether they’re trending up or down. The scene was information-dense, and if you click on the image, you can see how the original title frames the scene.
The modern farmer climbs into the air conditioned cab of a combine harvester, and turns on the radio. The radio fills the attention spaces left by, say, reading the weather signs or managing the workers or the animals.
Or this woman, feeding chickens–she’s “reading” things most of us can’t see. Are the chickens healthy? Are there any signs of incipient disease? Which ones are laying productively? which ones are destined for the dinner table?
A woman in a farm kitchen had a LOT to consider–just making a cooking fire took constant attention, and information about the kind and quality of the wood, the specific characteristics of the cook stove, the nature of the thing being cooked.
The modern cook flips on the burner, and his or her attention, freed up, diverts to other things. She or he has much less information to deal with.
So what appears to us as “too much information” could just be the freedom from necessity. I don’t have to worry about finding and cutting and storing firewood: I don’t even have to manage a coal furnace. That attention has been freed up for other things. What we see as “too much information” is probably something more like “a surplus of free attention.”
As a historian, I no longer have to spend hours scanning texts to find the smaller sets of information I need. They pop up quickly when I deal with digitized texts, and the search process is streamlined and automated much in the way a gas burner streamlines and automates a wood stove.
Just as the act of splitting and stacking firewood has become a deliberately anachronistic act, so might the act of splitting and stacking references become less necessary. Do I still need to sh0w, piece by piece, what anyone can find in five minutes? So what should our attention turn to?
One answer might be that academic history becomes more and more confined to the undigitized realm, the kinds of questions that take you to archives that grow increasingly anachronistic and old fashioned: more and more people focusing on a shrinking body of material. Although we all value that kind of work, overall that can’t be a good outcome.
It seems to me, as mentioned, that history will probably become less about evidence and more about the structure of the argument. Less about the manual accumulation of data–the splitting and chopping and stacking of fuel for the stove–and more about the context, the framing, and the discussion.
But the argument about attention here is that attention is a constant–it just directs itself, when freed, to whatever’s available. The arrival of online archives gives us “surplus attention.” What do we do with ourselves now that the time required for basic research has been (in many cases) so drastically reduced?
Another argument might be for new forms of historical writing, shorter forms with less scholarly apparatus. For example, I made a post about Walter Plecker, the Virginia eugenicist who set about reclassifying people as white or “colored” based on his own prejudices. The story is surprising and interesting and starts with the personal, but with two exceptions all the evidence in that post is available on the web, via Google books or Proquest or websites others have established.
It seemed to me to be too small a story for a scholarly article, and that much of it had already been told elsewhere. That makes it a good candidate for a blog post. It’s publicly available, based on evidence, and draws on twenty years as a professional historian. The online journal Common-place also has a lot of interesting work on it that’s in between the deep scholarly and the popular.
We could have that discussion, about the future of historical writing, here and elsewhere online.
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Helpful blog, bookmarked the website with hopes to read more!
Really nice information, thanks!
Lovely post. This echoes Clay Shirky’s recent book, Cognitive Surplus, but he makes the argument that in the 1970s-90s television sucked our attention away from other things (making things, playing games, etc).
Seriously? Where will the historical evidence for any serious new scholarly work come from if not from those “anachronistic” “undigitized realm”? So the old letters in trucks are all going to scanned an digitized? Every diary entry, invoice, hand-written note that is the grist for the history mill is somehow going to no longer be necessary in building the “story” of history? If we are to be confined to only what’s digitalized, that seems to me to a recipe for history becoming more and more people working from the same narrow pool of evidence. You’ll still need the dedicated local historian grubbing through attics, or the dedicated student poring over miles of mirofiche records of old fur-trading posts. When is all THAT going to be scanned into the computers, and who’s going to do it? Original research still requires the old school detective work and down-and-dirty grubbing among primary sources.
Computers are great for secondary sources, and for the well-known primary sources that have already been hashed and rehashed so many times they are unlikely to yield any new insights.
This article makes some good points about attention, but when it comes to history, it’s lost in the weeds.
The “arc” is inevitably going to be towards greater and greater digitization. Just think abut it: digital storage is 1000 times cheaper. It takes less space. It poses less problems of conservation. If you are running an archive, or special collections, you have strong incentives to want digitization.
And as people become more comfortable with/familiar with digital search, non digital archives will attract less and less use. That just seems obvious to me: I neither approve nor disapprove.
Great post; great blog. Is there any profile on Twitter which I could follow for update alerts ?
Very thoughtful post, and I think this is a terrific demonstration of a growing surplus of time; what you mean by attention isn’t clear to me – attention can go to anywhere – tv anyone?
“more about the context, the framing, and the discussion” – that to me is succinct as hell. Great stuff.
[…] posted here: Attention and Information Posted on October 28, 2010 by max. This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged […]
…listen this is wonderful; I’ve been thinking of my ability to achieve ‘attention autonomy’ only as a battle of my will vs. the amount of info with which I’m confronted.
Your idea that the info-nami that I perceive and by which I feel overwhelmed might be a function of a lack of a default level of alternate necessary attention targets is very interesting! We’ve been eyeballing the info but maybe it’s our changed context that is more relevant.
There was a limit to how inundated with info the people in the old photos could feel though, wasn’t there? Only so many chicken variables, or weather variables….. I have a dozen browser tabs open now and might very well open more!
Anyway it leads us to the same dilemma, doesn’t it? Whether there is too much info or it’s that my attention net may be cast wider because I live in a time with few imperative mundanities (as long as I don’t have kids!), I still struggle to balance an ungodly info load.
Hey a meta-comment, meant constructively: get your permalinks in order so that your wisdom can be found in search engines. A redirect or something. (Don’t just just change it in WordPress, your previous posts will lose their backlinks…)
Anyway, consider yourself bookmarked.
I fully agree with Witchywoman regarding the value of old archives and stuff that will probably always evade digitisation. It’s so easy now for a historian to just rehash what is digitised but much harder – but essential – to seek out new or little known dairies and other documents.
However the main point of the article, about how technology has given us more free time, is quite true! Another way of looking at it is that we can now do more in the time available.
Interesting article!
Attention a constant? I’ll ponder that in my sleep.
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[…] Attention and Information – The Aporetic – So what appears to us as “too much infor ma tion” could just be the free dom from neces sity. I don’t have to worry about find ing and cut ting and stor ing fire wood: I don’t even have to man age a coal fur nace. That atten tion has been freed up for other things. What we see as “too much infor mation” is prob a bly some thing more like “a surplus of free attention.” […]
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[…] quote from “Attention and Information” by Michael O’Malley So what appears to us as “too much information” could just […]
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According to my own investigation, billions of people all over the world receive the business loans at different creditors. Hence, there’s a good possibility to find a collateral loan in any country.
I don’t get it. “Free” attention? It seems to me like a verbal shell and pea game here. Saying that in 2011, if I don’t have to split and stack references I should theoretically have “more” attention is like saying that if I’m swimming in the ocean and I don’t have to swim in one particular direction, I’ll have more time available to do something other than swim in the water. Attention is always taken, already. We think we can easily “save it” or “give it.” Check with your nice Buddhist friend down the street. He or she will remind you that even if you sit Zazen for years you’ll be lucky to experience anything like a moment of “attention” that is within your control.
And as far as movement in historiography towards a focus on the “structure of the argument”…the context, framing and discussion…wow. I wish. I think that ship sailed long ago. When it comes to public and private discourse, we are living in the post-logical age. The Republicans (and perhaps others completely overwhelmed with “Information overload” (Carr) or “filtering problems” (Shirky)) figured out a while back that separating “evidence” from “context, framing and discussion” was a really nice way of turning the rhetorical from a mere tool of the bully pulpit into a downright nuclear bomb. An appeal to logic? To framing? To discussion? Please. I’m spending good money in therapy trying to figure out how to properly mourn THAT particular death.
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