Things That Make Us Smart

A machine is not distractible: My computer will keep doing its job even as the building burns down. We criticize people for their distractibility, but do we really want undistractible people? Instead of complaining that people are distractible, we might rejoice in the fact that people are attentive to their surrounds and to new events. In other words, the same behavior that is a liability from the machine-centered point of view is a virtue when seen from a human-centered perspective.

undistractible people? Instead of complaining that people are distractible, we might rejoice in the fact that people are attentive to their surrounds and to new events. In other words, the same behavior that is a liability from the machine-centered point of view is a virtue when seen from a human-centered perspective.

distractibility, but do we really want undistractible people?

but do we really want undistractible people?

A machine is not distractible: My computer will keep doing its job even as the building burns down. We criticize people for their distractibility

People, I have often been told, are easily distracted. Their attention wanders. In fact, people often complain about their own lack of concentration: “I get distracted by every new event in the room instead of concentrating upon my work.” Distractibility is indeed a problem for those of us who must concentrate upon a task. It takes great mental effort to avoid distraction

Are you dissatisfied with the school system? Don’t worry, for now the science museums and school systems can use interactive, multimedia video computers and other fancy technologies to entrance the student

Television has the power to inform, we are told

followed by a few hundred words of text. A few hundred words of text. That is less than is on this single page. It would be only a tiny newspaper article, and even long newspaper articles are but brief summaries of complex events. Is this the kind of informing we had in mind

The average television viewer in the United States watches twenty-one thousand commercials per year. News of the world is reduced to a few minutes per topic, each starting with the obligatory “reporter on the scene,” where the reporter stands in front of some “local color,” a background scene with appropriate sound and view to establish the fact that the reporter is actually there