Danah Boyd has an interesting blog post that begins with how youth are often exotified in business articles. Her case in point is an article published in Business World about youth in India titled called Aliens! What I found intriguing…

Here is the result:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ksenija/

(it’s summarized in my last post)

She has written a book of random facts and numbers (many with a social twist that I dig).

One fact she cited was that the average magazine article length X years ago was 1000 words and today it is 300. This would certainly seem to support the notion of projection.

On the other hand, she cited a study that cited that 1987, in Z art museum, the average visitor spent 10 or so second viewing each painting. By 1997, visitors spent fewer than three seconds. This would seem to be a demand side indicator of shorter attention spans, no?

what opinion do you have on Paul Bloom’s ideas on dualism; how is the technology changing the ideas about the self, and how we relate to the material. Are we seeing a change in how we develop, or are we seeing a social disruption and transition of how we think; or are our extensions reenforcing a underlining human phenomologic experience that relates with space and self that creates new metaphors embedded in the language.

Howard did touch on these questions; questions about self and where the soul is?

Choice becomes part of our thinking with an increasing influence on the external world; like Blooms child asks; “you can make me go to bed, but not sleep.”

Well, sure. I’m a veteran of the ’60′s, and I vividly remember watching my friend Andy work over a small sheet of paper with a Rapidograf pen, inking a cross-hatched nightmare that made a crisp new twenty look like a kindergardener’s crayon sketch. Talk about your attention span! He was at it all night, and never made eye contact with anyone else at the party.

Speed works. I wonder what these kids will be like in ten years? Twenty? Andy burned out long before that.

Richard

I am curious though, about the “youth framing”. Isn’t that a normal reaction to the “younger generation” type of thing? Our parents were concerned with us in a similar fashion i bet (and probably still are to some extent). Although I believe ADD is the fashion of the achievement generation (that is the young adults and kids of today)

Today it is almost unimaginable that anyone would be so gulliable to believe that images on a screen would have the ability to harm you, yet it is not at all dificult for some people to belive that music, television, and video games contribute to the decline of civilization.

I guess that I would be a member of the choir to your sermon.

In addition to the availability of new media and innovation, do you feel the expansion of language is a contributing factor– terms like ADD, post-traumatic stress-disorder did not exist.

Or could it be that adults are simply looking for excuses for there inability to accept the responsibility for future generations. Afterall, everyone of us learned from a role model before we ever new what one was. Were those formative years spent learning from someone that actually considered the consequence?

I get worried when I read articles like ones you describe, because it is covered in the stench of not even attempting to understand.

This feels like a total assumption to me. I’m not so sure they are needlessly asking themselves is there something better, and if they are… Given the vast number of voices out there in various medias – and given their general lack of trustworthiness (in terms of reliability and accuracy)- i’m not so sure it is “needless”.

It would be interesting to see if youth are using things like im and electronic based media more often because they trust these information sources as reliable and up-to-the-minute because they are “known”.

I also don’t necessarily buy the assumption that given choice people are worried that they might be missing something, or that that is the most important reason why they are choosing. Things like fickleness, ‘coolness’, apathy/boredom also play a big part in choice.

I do agree with you that this statement…

” IM is a kind of metaphor for the mindset of the new millennium youth. It fulfils a deep-seated need for constant stimulation. And keeps pace with their shorter attention spans.”

…is mostly bunk. do they really have shorter attention spans – where’s the scientific proof? i guess the author has never heard of “Crackberry”, i.e. I don’t think this issue lies solely in the purview of youth. I mean if they had written. IM(Cellphones, Crackberrys, etc.) are a kind of metaphor for the mindset of the new millenium. It fulfills a deep seated need for constant information. And keeps pace with their shorter free time. I might said hell…yeah.