Information overload and attention deficit: the wrong question to ask

In an article published in early 2010, Stowe Boyd, an American analyst specializing in the impact of social tools on business, media and society, refutes the widely-held view that information overload is causing people to lose attention.

Always connected, often drowning...

In The False Question of Attention Economics, Stowe Boyd notes that many commentators today believe that we have long since outgrown our ability to absorb and retain the relevant information that comes to us via the Internet and other media, in a continuous, bubbling stream.

It takes note of the fact that more and more of us are obsessed by the idea of missing something important in this flood of information, which leads us to stay constantly connected to our Twitter account, for example, a perfect symbol of the permanent flow of news in which we have to pick out the nugget. It also acknowledges the fact that we now prefer personal recommendation systems to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, and that we need others to build a value scale for the information we receive. In short, we can no longer do it alone.

The myth of the golden age of the right level of information

But if Boyd goes into great detail in his article on this widely-held position, it's only to refute it.

To do so, he draws on history. He notes that the question of attention deficit was posed in these terms as early as the 70s of the last century, well before the birth of the Internet as we know it today. What's more, he quotes 18th-century French philosopher Diderot, who observed that it had become virtually impossible to find the information you were looking for in books, given the sheer number of them. This led him to create the Encyclopédie, the first of its kind in French, which concentrated in a single series of volumes all the information available at the time on the sciences, arts and crafts. In short, Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie was the Internet of the 18th century.

Boyd goes on to develop his thoughts: in his view, all the pessimists who claim that we are no longer able to find our way in the flood of information that overwhelms us are adhering to the myth of a supposed golden age, a world in which we would have been able to make informed decisions on the basis of complete and sufficient information, available at the right time. This is, of course, false, but it forms the basis of all the arguments that accuse technology and the media of destroying our most sophisticated social forms. Boyd doesn't hesitate to say that this presupposition in fact conceals a much less avowed regret, that of an era when it was easier than it is today to control the dissemination and content of information, and to direct the behavior of the consumers we all are...

10 years to master karate. How many years to master information?

While Boyd does not deny the difficulties we face in managing the vast quantities of information to which we are exposed, he argues forcefully that this is above all due to the fact that this is a new phenomenon, and that it will take time for us to adapt to it, to invent effective tools and thus enrich our common culture once again. He draws a parallel here with the invention of writing, considered in antiquity to be the instrument of the loss of culture, and which in fact proved to be a formidable vector of enrichment for mankind.

According to Boyd, learning to manage the flow of information must be considered on a generational scale, something that attention deficit advocates fail to do. He mentions the fact that it takes at least 10,000 hours of learning to master practices as sophisticated as that of a musical instrument or martial art. Why shouldn't we give ourselves this time to improve our ability to manage information? The Internet represents a cultural and cognitive revolution as important as writing was thousands of years ago. Only by embracing this new tool and experimenting with it - and certainly not by sobbing about a pseudo-paradise lost - can we make the most of it, and thus contribute to the inevitable and much-desired advance of a common culture.

But what if it's all about power-sharing?

This demanding article has extensions and illustrations in many fields, not least education. The few rigorous studies conducted on the effects of ICT on student learning show that their use generates a significant increase in certain skills, particularly reading and writing skills, as Le Café Pédagogique opportunely reminds us by republishing a study by Jean Heutte. Not because they have any "magical" intrinsic qualities, but quite simply because they offer students more opportunities to read and, above all, write, which ultimately pays off. By widening access to sophisticated forms of expression, digital outls are shaking up old places of power. In the end, this is what Stowe Boyd was thinking about, when he suspected that those who are quick to lament our attention deficit are crying, above all, about the loss of their own power of control.

The False Question of Attention Economics, Stowe Boyd, Social Computing Journal, January 22, 2010.

Illustrations: Allessandrini, Flickr, CC License. Title page of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie.