Impossible to Focus

Remember that tale of how Arjuna could see nothing other than the eye of the (wooden) bird he was aiming at? That was lauded by his guru as a sign of being focused on the task at hand. Or as Yoda from Star Wars said, “Your focus is your reality.”

Today, staying focused is so very hard, because the “tide of technological revolution” that the philosopher Martin Heidegger warned about in the 1950’s is pounding us with tsunami after tsunami of data, e-mails, Facebook updates, tweets and WhatsApp messages all the time.

But not everyone feels this is a bad thing. Like Rob Horning who described how Internet consumption has changed his writing:
“I’ve grown incapable of researching as preparation for some writing project — I post everything, write immediately as a way to digest what I am reading, make spontaneous arguments and connections from what is at hand. Then if I feel encouraged, I go back and try to synthesize some of this material later. That seems a very Internet-inspired approach.”
Alan Jacobs says Google does the same thing:
“There’s a mantra among some software developers, most notably at Google: Launch and iterate. Get your app out there even with bugs, let your customers report and complain about those bugs, apologize profusely, fix, release a new version. Then do it again, and again.”
Of course, Google can get away with this approach because, hell, everything they give you is free...so your tolerance for quality issues is so much higher!
Jacobs confesses that he is a fan of the Google approach:
“The best venue I’ve found to support the launch-and-iterate model of the intellectual life: Twitter.”
Just goes to show that technology is a tool, neither good nor bad (most of the time). How you use it or adapt to it is entirely up to you.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJuly 13, 2016 at 8:31 PM

    In a somewhat similar context, if not entirely the same, I recall this.

    Geetha was writing the 8th standard English text book for Oxford University Press. Her guide and the chief editor wanted her to include one project work in the book, which aimed at children collecting information, then researching them and finally writing a presentation of facts on the subject.

    Though it looked a reasonable project proposal, Geetha flatly refused to comply with it. Her point: Children would go to net, download plentifully and then just cut paste some portions! No English language learning would occur at all for them!!

    Geetha's guide and chief editor had no argument to counter it. Try as he might he could not come up with any suggestion that would take care of Geetha's fear. Net result: some other project, which Geetha felt sure would make the children prepare and write in their own language, was included.

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