Epistemological Implications

19. Textual/Digital Oscillation changes our attention structures. We experience "gaze migration."

Taking the development of approaches to writing as an example:

Since printing:

• We thought we were:
  • Doing unconscious expression
  • looking through text
  • working toward Correctness
  • know so as to write about it.
    
    
• Instead, we need to learn (or maybe already be involved in):

• To do self-conscious design
• to look at text
• to work toward Effectiveness-Decorum
• to learn so as to make use.
• We've done this before--before printing--
  • For example, illustrated manuscripts

These shifts in attention (oscillations/changes in resolution) can be seen across all digital communication forms, not just writing. Increasing our ability to quickly shift is one of the primary features of digital media (it may also be one of the most dangerous).

The Secret World

Learning to See Data

Why a leading professor of new media just banned technology use in class

How Should We Think About Our Different Styles of Thinking?

Concept 19 Analysis article:

"How Reading — Not Scanning, Not Scrolling — Opens Your Mind."
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-maryanne-wolf.html>

OR

How Should We Think About Our Different Styles of Thinking?

Want to learn more?

Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley. The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI. Harvard Business School Pub, 2022.

Matthew Crawford, The world beyond your head : on becoming an individual in an age of distraction. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Daniel Levitin, The organized mind : thinking straight in the age of information overload, Dutton, 2014.