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We often joke that our attention straddle have dropped importantly in recent class with the upgrade of digital technologies and screen - centric amusement , but there is heavy skill to back up this observation . In fact , a shorter attention straddle is simply one side essence of a recent explosion of blind distraction , as brain doctor and author Richard E. Cytowic debate in his newfangled book , " Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen eld : Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload " ( MIT Press , 2024 ) .
In his book , Cytowic discuss how the human mind has not changed significantly since the Stone Age , which leave us badly outfit to care the influence and allurement of innovative technologies — particularly those propagated by braggy technical school companies . In this excerption , Cytowic foreground how our brains shinny to keep up with the lightning - degraded pace at which modern engineering , culture and society are changing .
From an engineering perspective , the mental capacity has fixed vigour limit that dictate how much piece of work it can handle at a given time . Feeling overloaded lead to stress . Stress lead to distraction . Distraction then leads to fault . The obvious solutions are either to stanch the incoming stream or alleviate the stress .
Hans Selye , the Magyar endocrinologist who develop the construct of focus , say that focus " is not what happens to you , but how you react to it . " The trait that allow us to handle accent successfully is resilience . Resilience is a welcome trait to have because all demands that pull you by from homeostasis ( the biological tendency in all organisms to maintain a stable internal milieu ) conduct to stress .
CRT screen distractions are a prime prospect for disturbing homeostatic equilibrium . Long before the coming of personal computers and the internet , Alvin Toffler popularized the term “ information overload ” in his 1970 bestseller , Future Shock . He promoted the bleak thought of eventual human dependence on technology . By 2011 , before most citizenry had smartphones , Americans take in five times as much information on a distinctive day as they had twenty - five age in the beginning . And now even today ’s digital natives quetch how stressed their constantly present tech is seduce them .
ocular overload is more likely a problem than auditory overburden because today , eye - to - brain connections anatomically outnumber ear - to - brain association by about a factor of three . Auditory perception mattered more to our earlier ancestors , but vision gradually lease jut . It could bring what - if scenarios to heed . Vision also prioritize simultaneous remark over sequential ones , meaning that there is always a postponement from the meter audio wave slay your eardrums before the brain can understand what you are hearing . Vision ’s concurrent stimulation means that the only lag in grasping it is the one - ten percent moment it call for to journey from the retina to the basal visual pallium , V1 .
Smartphones easily gain ground out over conventional telephones for anatomical , physiologic , and evolutionary reasonableness . The limitation to what I call digital sieve input is how much the lense in each eye can transfer selective information to the retina , the lateral geniculate , and thence to V1 , the primary visual cortex . The modern quandary into which we have engineered ourselves hinge on flux , the stream of radiant energy that bombards our good sense from far and near . For aeon , the only flux human sense receptor had to transform into perception regard ken , sounds , and taste from the rude globe . From that time to the present we have been able to detect only the flyspeck splinter of the full electromagnetic radiation sickness that instruments tell us is objectively there . Cosmic molecule , radio waves , and cell signals pass through us unnoticed because we miss the biologic sensors to find them . But we are tender , and extremely so , to the manufactured flux density that started in the 20th century and lies on top of the natural background knowledge flux .
Our self - created digital glut hit us ceaselessly , and we can not help but notice and be deflect by it . Smartphone storage is measured in tens of gigabytes and the severe drive of a computer in terabyte ( 1,000 G ) , while data volume are depend in petabytes ( 1,000 TB ) , zettabytes ( 1,000,000,000,000 gigabytes ) , and beyond . Yet mankind still have the same physical brain as our Stone Age ancestors . True , our strong-arm biology is amazingly adaptive , and we populate every recession on the satellite . But it can not possibly keep up with the breathtaking speed at which advanced engineering , culture , and company are changing . Attention spans figure prominently in debate about how much screen photo we can treat , but no one considers the energy cost involve .
A much - name study conducted by Microsoft Research Canada arrogate that attention duet have dwindle down to below eight second — less than that of a goldfish — and this supposedly explains why our ability to focalise has gone to hell . But that study has shortcoming , and “ attention span ” is a conversational term rather than a scientific one . After all , some people ’s Stone Age encephalon have the capacity to compose a symphony , monitor the information stream from a atomic nuclear reactor or the space station , or function out thus far unsolvable problems in mathematics . Individual differences exist in the capacitance and ability to cope with stressful events . To give California its due , Gloria Mark at the University of California , Irvine , and her workfellow at Microsoft valuate attention spans in everyday environments . In 2004 , people averaged 150 s before switching from one screen to another . By 2012 that clip had fallen to 47 seconds . Other studies have replicated these solution . We are dictated to be interrupted , say Mark , if not by others , then by ourselves . The drainpipe on our switch is " like make a gas storage tank that leaks . " She found that a childlike chart or digital timer that prompts masses to take periodic breaks help oneself a deal .
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Neuroscience distinguishes sustained attention , selective attention , and flip-flop aid . Sustained attention is the ability to focus on something for an lengthy period . Selective care speaks to the aptitude for filtering out compete distraction to stick with the undertaking at script . Alternating attention is the capacity to switch from one undertaking to another and back again to where you left off . In terms of the energy cost incur by repeatedly shifting attention throughout the twenty-four hour period , I fear we have hit the mind ’s Stone Age boundary . Exceeding it results in hazy thinking , rock-bottom focus , think block , retentiveness reverting or precision calipers , any tool quickly comes to feel like an propagation of oneself . The same apply to sassy devices . Two one C ago when the first steam railway locomotive reached a blistering speed of thirty miles per hour , alarmists warned that the human torso could not withstand such speeds . Since then ever - faster car , communicating methods , jet plane , and electronics have imbue into the culture and become absorbed into everyday sprightliness . In early times few Modern technologies appeared per decennary , few mass were awake , and society was much less machine-accessible than it is today .
By direct contrast , the invention , proliferation , and development of digital technology have put the status quo in constant magnetic flux . Unlike analog counterparts such as a landline telephone or a turntable , bright machine repeatedly call for and overlook our attention . We have qualify ourselves to reply to texts and incoming calls the present moment they come . Admittedly , sometimes job and bread and butter do calculate on an immediate response . Yet we pay a toll in full term of DOE cost incurred by constantly shifting and refocus tending .
This excerpt has been edit for style and distance . Reprinted with permission from " Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen old age : get by with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload " by Richard E. Cytowic , put out by MIT Press . All right reserved .
Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age : Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload — $ 28.91 on Amazon
The human mastermind has n’t shift much since the Stone Age , let alone in the mere thirty year of the Screen Age . That ’s why , harmonize to brain doctor Richard Cytowic — who , Oliver Sacks observed , “ changed the way of life we think of the human brain ” — our mentality are so poorly fit out to resist the incursions of Big Tech .
