As much as I would like to join you in your poly-medium continuous partial attention space, I've found that I just can't do it. Whenever I try to use digital devices to augment a live discussion, I inevitable end up missing important portions because I'm incapable of reading and listening at the same time. (This is different from pulling out an iPhone in a one-on-one discussion where the other participant can wait until you're back in the conversation).

OTOH, I've found that playing casual games such as Bejewelled actually enhances my auditory concentration by giving my eyes something to do. However, this is even more frowned upon than looking things up in Wikipedia in a meeting.

I wonder if part of this difference is gender? Are you truly able to keep track of everything that's going on or is it just that you figure 80% attention in two mediums is better than 100% attention in one?

Hi Danah

Taking notes was my little runnaway during meetings all of my life. Now with the laptop is very much the same thing.

The issue is not if you "are" there or not. The notion of presence has changed. The issue is how much do you contribute in the long run.

PS: we can´t blame Rafael... surrounded has he was by gorgeaus Italian women. Probably sex was his way of "taking notes" during art meetings.

In high school, my teachers were irritated that I was constantly doodling during classes, til they realized it actually helped me concentrate on their words. In college classes, with the help of a calligraphy pen, my doodles grew into works of art worthy of framing. My grades left no room for complaint about that.

I wondered myself what conference attendees could possibly be getting out of the talks they attended when so many of them were clearly focused on their laptops, but your explanation (wanting more information) makes sense. (Even watching TV these days, I'm frequently tempted to pop into IMDB to figure out "where have I seen that actor before?") Maybe as a society we're better at multi-tasking than we used to be, because it's expected of us.

OTOH, Live-tweeting probably does detract from the level of attention you can give the speaker; OTOOH, it's a service to others who can't be there.

Don't worry about the Italian professor - Italians LOOOVE to hear themselves talk, with the corollary that they expect the audience to be on the edge their seats for the sheer pleasure of hearing them.

I work for Linden Lab (Second Life). Many of our meetings are virtual (in-world).

It's totally accepted and expected, that there is always a running real-time text chat of commentary and questions while the auditory portion of the meeting is happening.

We also concurrently monitor multiple IRC rooms of work-related conversations, have Skype and AIM running. And some of us have a Twitter client on our desktop chugging away too.

Equally so, we are often working on other things during meetings. E-mail, web-browsing, coding, designing... whatever needs to be done.

This is our everyday working and living environment. And we love it here :)

Interesting observation and a tidy little rant to boot ;-)
Just the other week I was at a conference and got busy with my back-channels and tools of sharing as is becoming the 'norm' at geek events. I was quite proud of the fact that I had managed to assemble pictures, audio and lo-fi video during the event, edit them into a little video story then share online.

I woke up in a cold-sweat at 3.00am the following morning feeling 'bitch-slapped' because I had shared stuff that was OK in a room of 1,000 people with the whole world - in a way that could so easily be nasty if taken out of context. And I guess that's the issue, much of the stuff we share online while enhancing information through our networks of connection leaves a permanent trail that can cause unintended grief. And it will probably take a long time for society as a whole to adjust to the idea that many of us need to be connected and engaged and that the stuff we share remains online, forever.

I hope we both recover from our 'bitch-slaps' and that we don't shy away from the sometimes uncomfortable consequences of connecting and sharing during events. That would be sulking, or worse, self-censorship.

Fang

danah, thanks for both clarifying and explaining a tendency that I have, haven't known how to explain, and tend to guilt over. During presentations or even meetings, I often feel to need to make notes of questions, write down topics for later deeper research, or just get my thoughts about a point down. I normally do this on paper, because of the implicit (or sometimes explicit) disapproval of an electronic device. No more. This makes perfect sense to me, and I'm already excited about it. Thanks so much for getting this down on pa...er, you know what I mean. *grin*

danah,
i can't watch a tv show without stopping 20 times to look up and read out sections of wikipedia to compare the truth with the show (we just finished a crash course in 1500s euro history by watching three seasons of the tudors the past 3 wks). i can't have a dinner party without everyone pulling out wikipedia on their iphones and sharing results. i can't go to a dinner party without everyone asking about things and then googling the results (recently it was "how many 'hot jews' -- women -- are there in hollywood" everyone except me thot not many, but it turns out there are at least 20 top stars who are very hot). and after the dinner, everyone does a photo and video show on the big screen, passing around a laptop to show off interesting things they know of online.

i think it's far more compelling for our brains to answer a curiosity right when we have it, if possible, than to do it old style where you interrupt of can't ask. and the judgment about that? i think people learn more when there is a need for information than when there is not.

honestly i think we are just waiting around for some dinosaurs to die off, even though i really want to incorporate views of older people, esp their wisdom and experience, into products, software, political and technology issues. plus build software to help them. but situations like this just make me want to write off those who don't get it.

keep doing what you do. it's is awesome and who cares if you are out front with technology and your work. rock on.

Mary totally reminded me about my movie watching habits. Wikipedia + IMDB is a MUST augmented layer for anything I watch (and my wife as well). That's a LOT of data when you think of a single actor/actress' filmography etc. Amusingly, I deeply enjoy movies and get lost in the plot, even tho the anti-magic is loading on the second screen in front of me.

I, too, want (more) of a cyborg life.

Score one win for Google's office culture : ) pings and all...

Not to take away from the rest of your great post, but I love this line: "The only thing that I really blame said technology for is limiting doodling practice for the potential future artist."

Am I learning what the speaker wants me to learn? Perhaps not. But I am learning and thinking and engaging.

There are going to be speakers who are irritated by this. The argument goes that you could be learning and thinking and engaging somewhere else (like a library), and that not giving your "full attention" is disrespectful. What constitutes respectful and disrespectful behavior is culturally constructed, and cultures change; you appear to have been caught in such a change in Italy.

There is a second issue of patience. Specifically, I have come across words and concepts all my life while reading or listening that I did not understand, and have written them down to be looked up later. Sometimes my experience might be enhanced by having the information immediately, sometimes it doesn't matter so long as I have the discipline to look it up after the talk is over or the chapter is finished. Technology allows us to get more information *now*, but I am unconvinced that now is always better than later, mainly because I think that continuous partial attention is problematic.

Over the coming decades, I think you are going to get what you want. The demographics are on your side, and most people can type faster than they can write. People passing snarky digital notes during a presentation may be rude, but the value of access to extra information and the speed of typing are going to outweigh old cultural norms which reject electronic devices.

Exactly - live-twittering is how I make notes and gather remote reactions at once - it makes me extra-focused on the speaker, and gives me a wealth of reactions and follow-ups to bring back to the question section.

I envy you your ability to multi-task. When I take notes or look up info or read tweets, I don't hear what's being said or follow the presentation very well.

I'm 38 and my undergrad education was in the extremely linear engineering field - coincidence? Probably not. I think the traditionally masculine fields of science and engineering teach a way of thinking that makes it difficult to follow more than one track at a time. There are a variety of reasons for this, but I suppose that's a separate discussion. It has also been my experience that there is a sense of superiority in these fields (and the associated manner of thinking) that is derived from the fact that the industrial era was driven by advances in science and engineering.

This goes a long way to explain the disdain that your sociocybernetic friend felt towards your activities. Clearly, you were not using the methods of learning that have revolutionized the world!

It makes me wonder if scientists and engineers are getting better with multi-track thinking than they were previously or not. It seems likely, doesn't it?

I'll keep working on it - it gets easier with practice!

One thing that I'm not sure how to account for in all of this is my ADHD. My brain follows threads regardless of whether I have a device in front of me or not. I used to take pills that allowed me to actually stay on the thread of the speaker (aka teacher). I no longer do and I prefer it this way. (Medicated me is not creative me.) So just because I might appear to look like I'm paying attention to one thread does not mean that I actually am. I learned to perform attention in high school. But, as an adult, I'm more interested in learning than in performing like I am. I don't attend talks or conferences as an act of respect but in the hopes that I might gain something the event, even if what I gain isn't necessarily what the speaker thinks that they're there to impart. This is a privilege that I have as an adult that I did not have as a teen stuck in classrooms. Perhaps that's rude to the speaker. But as a speaker myself, my #1 goal is to get people to think and I'm stoked when my research makes them think differently about the world, even if they only took away one core nugget. (It's certainly better than most talks which tend to go in one ear and out the other.)

So anyhow, I know darn straight that I don't get everything that a speaker says. But even if I don't have devices or paper or whatnot, I can't get everything that a speaker says. My brain doesn't work that way and I'm ok with that. I like my brain just the way it is.

danah, I agree with many of your points about the benefits of backchannels -- from the audiences' perspective. From the speaker's perspective, I'm not as convinced. When I'm presenting, I find it difficult to gauge interest & comprehension when there is no eye contact or other non-verbal feedback, just heads bent over laptops. I guess there are ways around this (e.g., having a TA monitor the back-channel in a class, for instance). Or perhaps if everyone is online, this is feedback in and of itself? ;-)
d, I'm curious - in your own presentations, do you find it disconcerting to have folks on laptops? Is there a critical mass at which it becomes disconcerting? Any recommended practices for making it less so? I'm interested in your thoughts about it from the *speaker's* perspective.

Hey danah, thanks for writing this up. A lot of us feel the same way. I'm working on big project on backchannels as digital literacies and would love it if you'd forward me any particularly good replies you receive as a result of this post. It's all very fascinating from a rhetoric/literacy/learning sciences perspective. :)

Nicole - Actually, at this point, I find it really disconcerting when people are actually looking at me. And even more disconcerting when I have to rely on a handful of people who will approach me afterwards to gauge my success rather than being able to get a transcript of the discussion or tweets. I've learned to take other cues from the audience. For example, I know when I've made a point that people like when there's a sudden synchronous upswing in clicking of the keys. But you can still see if folks are on - it just requires reading different cues and making jokes to see what level of laughter you get. And when you're not getting much, you don't have their attention.

Of course, I'm talking about audiences where the attendees WANT to be listening to me. Classrooms are different. One of the deeply depressing realities of teaching at university is that many of the students are simply not interested in being there. I find this frustrating no matter what, laptops or not. My goal then is to drag their attention kicking and screaming to me by playing games with their attention, visually or otherwise. I don't expect them to pay attention to me by default; I want to earn their attention... or at least play games with it.

I also think there's just an issue of practice. I've gotten pretty good at reading all-laptop audiences. I'm TERRIBLE about reading foreign audiences. That's my biggest hurdle, always.

There really are experiences so involving that they must be fully lived by all those present.

You simply must sometimes go skydiving, swim in ocean surf, prepare to be a witness in court, argue about god and about love with people who mean it, and drive a car [i]that[/i] fast. :D

I can relate as someone who's also off-pill ADHD.

In school, I taught myself the skill of 'weaving' information - taking the incoming information and forming as many connections as possible with existing information. I've always believe that 'forgetting' is similar to when computer software has memory leaks: there is data there but nothing is pointing to it anymore so you can't get to it.

When taking notes however, I've found the information doesn't get 'linked', and instead the brain is occupied with the language and motor centers transcribing the information back out again (in one ear...). Back in school I always used to get looked down upon (by students and teachers) for just listening and not taking notes like my other more studious peers. However, since I tended to have a better grasp of the subject by the end of the lecture, I could ask questions geared towards furthering the connections and cementing my understanding.

When technology and the backchannel appeared, I found myself making a hypertext equivalent of the 'weaving'. During slow or largely uninformative lectures I tend to do further research on the topic now instead of daydreaming off when there was no new information to be transcoded.

I have always looked down on the note taking elements of 'study skills' as taking 'fresh' information and processing it only once it's 'stale', but I do not feel the same about backchannel discussion or lookups.

It would be nice if we replaced early school 'study skills' brainwashing with a more open discussion about the process of learning (and how everyone does not learn the same way) and the role of technology in this process, but I fear we will have to wait for the 'old mindset' to loosen its grip on education for this to happen.

Two comments: 1) Some speakers like audience feedback (really). I think it is quite hard to get feedback from a blue-glow audience, but that may be just me ;-) This is probably less of an issue with large audiences, but in a smaller setting it can become a problem. 2) Text-backchannels during telephone conferences or virtual meetings are, IMNSHO, a symptom of the first mediums' limitations.

Danah, I recognise my own media habits while reading your rant. I often feel under-stimulated if only paying attention to one channel, and so get distracted. If I have a laptop, I can engage with the content by blogging it, looking up extra details, etc. and it also enhances my recall of the subject. I don't have ADHD to my knowledge, but recognise some of your strategies for concentration - I feel like I have to keep one track of my brain occupied (e.g. with music, podcasts) while I work, to allow the other part to get into the material. An extreme form is media binging (see Faris' blog at http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/media_binging.html), so it seems this is a trend that's growing.

Perhaps one of the impacts of growing up with digital media is the ability to monitor multiple channels for relevant information in parallel?

Interesting post for which I feel 100% empathy: taking notes (usually directly on my blog), looking for translations, downloading cited papers, finding the original slides on slideshare, checking data and definitions on wikipedia, linking the spearkers' bios or homepages or blogs, twitting quotes or "headlines", IMing with other attendees, inviting the speakers and attendees to meet on FB, taking photos and editing and publishing along text in my blog, etc, etc, etc. That's things I do on a normal basis when attending conferences... and even when chairing them or being part of a round table - my own speeches are pre-cooked on the blog and refreshed/enriched live during the Q&A session.

Regarding being a speaker and laptops, I've got two different feelings there. The first one is "why did you NOT bring your laptop? are you taking notes on paper? what then, how are you going to file/search/retrieve them?". Second one is about people with laptops. As the expert teacher can tell who's taking notes and who's sketching just by looking, I think one progressively develops the skills to know who's taking notes, twitting the event or live-blogging it, and who's just checking e-mail or tagging photos on Facebook.

Anyway, I think the debate whether one should stay or listen to the speaker when not interested in their words is a completely different debate than enhanced knowledge management - call it cyborg life :)

I'm sure it's not the case but "a sudden synchronous upswing in clicking of the keys" could also indicate a point that people find laughable.

More seriously, the two key issues here are surely how much courtesy/respect an audience owes the speaker and a definitive answer as to whether our new behaviours actually optimise our comprehension or merely give us the feeling that they do?

I also very much like the idea of back-channels during conference calls, but wonder if you are assuming that your "ignorance" of a particular point is unique - perhaps it might be collectively productive if you actually spoke up and broke up the rigid linearity of the call rather than politely asked elsewhere via the backchannel?

Interesting discussion. I suspect that what is going on is analogous to the formation of a new creole, the incorporation of other data transfer mechanisms and channels into communication. I think it is like how sign language only became a natural language when children learned it as their first language. The cohort of children growing up with signing as their first language forced the grammar and syntax to conform to the universal grammar.

In language, the correspondence between the data stream (the sounds, hand gestures, etc.) and the mental concept the data stream is being used to transfer, is arbitrary, there has to be a mechanism to enforce a one-to-one correspondence in the cohort among which the creole is developing. I think this is where the compulsion for snark comes from; the condescending comment by the person sitting next to you and your own compulsions.

I suspect that the “snark” is more about process rather than content. I see it as the attempt to enforce a single language via peer pressure. If communication is constricted to only communication media and methods that the snarker can understand, then the snarkee can’t communicate with other members of the snarkee’s cohort without the snarker understanding.

i really agree about the backchannel on conference calls. sometimes i just want to re-state an idea to see if that's what others heard, or clarify an acronym. our conference system at least can't handle interruption/multiple voices at once very well, which would be easy if we were all in the same room. you feel much more a part of the conversation that way...it helps build community/relationships with the folks at the remote site. it still takes some discipline not to let it become a comedy routine or distraction, though.

in a presentation, i sometimes look things up, but i am not sure i've found the correct balance in order to keep my attention on the topic. and it does still feel vaguely rude, they don't know if you're checking personal email or looking up references. so sometimes i just make a note of something to look up later, and then i can take the time to explore in more depth. in work meetings i make an effort to also make some comment or ask a question out loud if i've been typing, to confirm engagement and feedback to the speaker, not just the other members of the (backchannel) audience. the personal relationships and 1:1 interaction is still important!

I'm having about seven impossible thoughts, but it's not before breakfast, and maybe they're incompatible rather than impossible:

1. My personal quiet rebellion in college to pay attention without taking notes: knitting. I did it most in the 20th c. European history course taught by Jane Caplan. What could a feminist historian say to a man who was knitting?

2. I probably would not try to start a mosh pit at a linedancing event. Just saying.

3. I WANT TO KNOW HOW TO READ LAPTOP AUDIENCES!! That's probably what would convert some part of the people who are uncomfortable with texting/twittering groups.

4. Academics and others who may be uncomfortable around twittering are just pissed that their learned societies and professional organizations suck up Huge Registration Fees and don't pay for wifi in the hotels. Twittering was wild at THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp/unconference), and we realized this would have been impossible at most humanities conferences.

5. I agree on the need to grab student attention, especially selling a course on the first day.

6. On the other hand (okay, the sixth hand), my experience is that student laptop activity distracts OTHER students in a large class in a way that doodling or other very private activity does not.

7. Passive laptop activity is not the same as passive smoking; I suspect there are ways around #6 apart from the generic "play games with their attention" advice, or rather there needs to be a repertoire of specific Things to Do so those of us whose brains are atrophying can try them as needed.

The key sentence in your blog post for me is: "When I'm inspired, I ask questions. When I'm not, I zone out, computer or not." I am a former high school teacher and I currently work with teachers at the community college level. Too many teachers blame technology (or the work ethic of the younger generation or video games or you name it) for the lack of attention paid them in lecture style classes. But, like your statement says, it doesn't matter whether there is a digital device or not. If a student doesn't want to pay attention, she won't. But, she can fake it better without the computer and that makes the teacher happier.

danah -

first off, the comment that you make about this incident is 100% correct. the main thing that i found so astonishing at this conference was the complete and utter disconnect between generations and cultures. and moreover, as i think about it, the acceptance of information gathering as a tool.

you and i, live in a world where access to information gives us sanity, safety, engagement, and freedom. i can't tell you how many times over the last few weeks, while traveling, did i realize how normal being "connected" is for me and how frustrating it is to have this tool taken away from me. it allows me to formulate plans, to actively think, and to store, reflect, share my thoughts.

during a presentation or learning environment, it provides me with these same powers and freedoms and enriches my experience. however, that all said, i am also pretty terrible at multi-tasking between two different linguistic forms... so i find myself in patterns where sometimes i will tune in and listen solely, then tune out and read, knowing that i wont gain as much from the presentation, but will probably be utilizing my time more effectively. i think this is probably a reality for many.

anywho, i think its also worthwhile to keep in mind that during the same presentation, someone in audience also noted "that he had never seen a presentation like that -- where someone is sitting on a desk and it's all pictures." and another "that his kid could never be how you describe children to be". it was a very foreign audience, from very different cultural background.

for me it was eternally eye opening to realize just how much of my digital culture, i take for granted. and just how much ... i LOVE it!

danah,

Very interesting post! Thanks for sharing your experience, and also thanks to all the commenters.

I think your follow up mentioning ADHD (and others' comments about the challenges they face in attempting the backchannel that enriches your own experience), points to the likely importance of neurology to our differences on this issue.

Social approval of backchanneling may be shaped by cultural norms. But as these shift, I think we'll find that the difference in how some of us navigate a world of "continuous partial attention" -- for some a boon, for others a drag -- will depend on our hard wiring.

I think it's a big mistake to attribute this difference primarily to culture (those Italians!), or to age, or generation. (E.g. Mary's comment that "we are just waiting around for some dinosaurs to die off, even though i really want to incorporate views of older people, esp their wisdom and experience" -- From hatred to patronizing in 140 chars!!)

Let's all be aware that some of us will thrive nibbling on IMDB.com between spoonfuls at dinner, but others will not -- and it's not just because they are "dinosaurs."

Others like Adam Singer have recently commented on having the opposite experience as you (i.e. why multi-tasking hinders them). I was just wrote a post on my blog comparing your two perspectives and the issues for all of us: http://bit.ly/Yng9j

best,
David Rogers

Love this. First time reader here.
I work in academia, but I'm not an academic, I'm a web developer. I was trained in research and reading and lecturing techniques that don't really serve me very well any more. When I attend conferences (technology-related) I engage in exactly the same things you mention, with my laptop. I'm older than you -- 47 -- so I'm perhaps not as representative of those in my generation. But I completely understand the problems of both sides.
The big issue for the older generation seems to be respect: give the speaker some attention. But I've learned from being a speaker that it goes both ways. Too many mediocre speakers think that they deserve utter and complete attention -- and feel disrespected when audience attention strays.
But at really good tech events, the audience is not less engaged, it is more engaged. The audience/speaker dynamic is changed, and the speakers I've become most engaged with want to see a dynamic audience develop.

Doesn't your backchanneling interfere with your reverie?

Have you ever read John M. Ford's novel "Growing Up Weightless"? He predicted this sort of backchannel-talk in, oh, 1990 or so (in fact the teleconferencing software in the book was actually _designed_ to facilitate backchannel.)

Reading your post and all these replies reminds me of my high school experience. Laptops were mandatory in the senior school and some teachers did better with this than others - obviously in math it's less likely you'll be taking notes with a laptop, but the same people who fall asleep in math class play video games in English. I was always looking up things online as teachers talked about them, and in French class I finished my assigned work early and then worked on a personal project of translating manga from french to english. But in my summer course my professor, who is obviously passionate about what he is talking about and moves so quickly it takes a lot of attention for me to be engaged enough to take notes, bemoaned the fact that laptops were now allowed in lectures and that he was sure that most students who had them in class were off somewhere else. As someone who can touch-type much faster than she can write, and has only a textedit window open, I find this rather insulting. And if I didn't know I needed to take notes to retain any information and he moved more slowly I would likely be wikipedia-ing things as he spoke, because that's how I studied for my most recent midterm.

So I guess you know you're preaching to the converted, and when you spend all your time with a group of people for whom this is the norm it's always strange to feel the disconnect in another situation. Every year my family used to go away to Florida for March Break, two weeks or so, and this would signal an offline time for me. There was an extensive detox period you might call it (if we could remove the negative connotations) as google and wikipedia and IMDB twitched in my mind like a phantom limb all day. Eventually you get used to not knowing things and sometimes this is useful - in the middle of writing something - and sometimes it's a lack.

Some of this reminded me of an old paper I'd read The ActiveClass Project:
Experiments in Encouraging Classroom Participation

They'd written a custom application with an "understanding meter" where students could rate the material as "I understand or don't understand". Also since some students are shyer and are afraid to ask questions publicly (for fear of looking dumb), their software included a way to semi-anonymously submit questions via their hand-helds.

More recently I also saw a video of a talk where the moderators were picking questions for the speaker off of twitter, which seemed much more efficient than passing notes or having people stand up at a microphone. (And twitters 140 character limit forces the questioner to get to their point, in the large public venue so many "questions" are really "mini-talks" by someone with a particular ideological leaning).

I think your post crosses most if not all of the points discussed by John Medina in "Brain Rules". See http://www.brainrules.net/attention.

It seems to me that you were trying at the lecture to keep your attention in the game by your active engagement in looking up info, scanning papers, and such, and no one could really see what was in reality happening. Accordingly, they made judgments to fill in the spaces.

danah,
I think that you catch the essential problem when you say,"Am I learning what the speaker wants me to learn? Perhaps not. But I am learning and thinking and engaging." I have long ago decided that many of these situations become clearer if one asks the question, "Who is in control?" The audience is taking more control of the presentation and many speakers just can't accept this. Some say that the time of a "sage on the stage" is past, but there are still many who refuse to accept this change. If the speaker is forcing the audience members to really think about a topic, the speaker is doing his or her job. It is up to the audience to decide WHAT to think.

One of the best posts I have read (as opposed to scanned) in ages.

It is interesting I think that we have all this info at our fingertips but right now its not completely easy to get access to it. The iphone was a major jump forward for me as I always have it on me - carrying a laptop around is rare for me.

I do think though that once that access becomes mainstream and open to everybody the majority will still not make use of it. Using it instead to kill time in some as yet unthought of way..

danah, thanks very much for writing this up.

i've experienced similar situations too many times to count and as a result my perspective used to be quite unsympathetic of existing norms.

lately however, i've tried to broaden my perspective, and now seek a peaceful transition to our brave new cyborg world.

how can we help transition those that want to, and provide easy small steps to help broader norms evolve to become more cyborg-positive?

tantek

I like this post. I can understand the appeal.

At 70, I am also one of the dinosaurs, although I take notes during conference calls and at meetings and events. I use a Tablet PC specifically to avoid creating a barrier between me and others at a face-to-face meeting of any kind (although I have been using it more than a laptop lately, especially if there is WiFi, and I must stop that).

I mostly don't have a dividable attention and I have to be careful. Notetaking is a way for me to pay attention and to create markers for myself as well as observations that I don't want to forget. I don't keep multiple chats or anything like that on my desktop, I don't keep a twitter stream open or at least not in site, and I don't have anything firing off alerts. I also power-down my phone on the way into meetings and events.

For me, this is all about differences in styles and probably also generatiional differences in managing attention, moderated by whatever adaptation that age requires.

The one concern that I have is about listening. Devoted listening provides something to the speaker. It is as if even the one-wayness has some two-way quality to it. Since I learned about that and experienced it enough times, I find that I do more to pay attention. Some speakers, you included, make that easy to do. Others are clearly unaware of an audience (and I may be one of those too). If I can't stand it and cannot be generous in listening, I will take a walk. That seems less damaging to the space.

One of my library school professors berated me in front of the class for IM-ing during class. I was taking notes. I felt so angry but there was nothing I could do. I am astonished that at my library school, only one professor was not hostile to laptop users. WTF!!!!!

AND

Some observations from the college teaching front---

(1) Some students really do take notes etc. on their laptops. They are definitely paying attention.

(2) There are very, very few students who do that though, and instead are surfing the web, chatting, etc. They may as well not be present at all. Others complain to me about it---when the person sitting in front of them is looking at the latest fb photos and really IS laughing out loud, it's distracting. If many students are checked out in this way, it's like we're in a meat locker. Some people are there in body but not spirit.

(3) If surfing etc only happened some of the time, it wouldn't be a problem. Who am I to say where someone's mind might wander? People can doodle and daydream and that's not harming anyone, and is probably a necessary mental break. But when the situation described in (2) is routine, something has to be done.

(4) Idea: require everyone that is using a laptop in class to email me or the class as a whole at least two references to relevant documents online they've found during class.

(5) I don't know what legitimate use an iPhone or BB can have in class but I suppose the same requirement as in (4) might work to keep students focused.

One observation: I think you may be inadvertently downplaying the importance of the "tasks" of "receiving"--e.g., the outward social gestures and expressions that you need to make to reassure other people that what they are doing for you (for your sake) is OK with you.

In some sense, it'd make sense at this point in time, if speakers got up in front of everyone and said: I'm OK if you aren't looking at me and are using your computer, because I can trust that you are receiving what I am saying in the way that works best for you.

But, if there's isn't some shared understanding about that being an agreeable form of interchange, it shouldn't be that surprising that people expect "default" social interchange--e.g., expect others to look at them, smile or nod occasionally, and otherwise, on cue, make outward gestures that reaffirm that society hasn't collapsed, that no predator is about to pounce, no one is about to completely freak-out, etc.

***

Conferences often have a weird social convention of being shut down with regards to communicating any social expectations--e.g., when you go to a conference, if you are "in," you already know what is cool to do and make a point of doing it; and if you don't already know (or, don't care), then you stand "out" in the crowd and everyone else can perceive you as one who does uncool things.

In your scenario, imho, it really was the job of the conference organizers to tell everyone if there was any expectation about how people should act in the audience.

this theme has come up in many conversations lately, from whether it's "rude" to be surfing your iPhone during group dinner or a meeting to the recent proposal to add "internet addiction" to the list of mental disorders in the DSM to (our mutual) friends' observations during their summer travels that people in other countries don't have devices connected to their bodies, and seem happier.

i think, as many others have said, that it all depends on how you, as an individual, process information. part of it is generational, part of it how you've learned to learn, part of it inherent brain-capacity limits that maybe you don't have control over. some people simply can't read and listen at the same time. other people find themselves wandering too far afield if they start looking up things, and miss the point of whatever they are experiencing. but some of us have seemingly limitless sponge-brains that thrive off multiple information sources, and shouldn't be chided for doing so.

i can see how all of this is extremely useful at a lecture/conference/museum, where the point is to LEARN and absorb as much as possible, but do you feel the same way about use of laptops/iPhones/blackberries during casual conversations or gatherings, where the persons present simply don't stop looking at their screens, even while you're talking to them, or do you put it all away? because that's where i think things like lack of body language and eye contact start to get really aggravating and override any "data" input. i've just started saying: look it up later. talk to me.

some time ago we were doing a project with veterinary students. we gave them mobile phones with cameras, shozu and unlimited internet, and asked them to capture anything interesting, tag it, upload and use that in their tutorials. The students loved it, the tutors loved it. Only problem? How do you use the kit without other medical staff or clients thinking that you're mucking about? A pad and pen says "I'm a good boy taking note(s)", a gizmo says "I'm playing".
Then there's the power issue. Who owns the narrative? I love having a backchannel when I'm speaking, but that's just over-confident under-serious me. No connectivity means knowledge flows from me, the speaker, to you, the reciepient.
And finaly, your brain, my dear, works different. Years of chatrooms and IMs have made you capable of multiplexing in a way that only fighter pilots could 20 years ago. For the etruscan chap sitting next to you, following more than one thread is just not possible. Hence, if you are reading you can't be listening.

Although, on second thought, having obsereved Italians in a tratoria, he should know better.

ciao

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge has a number of classroom scenes that address this issue. Since in that somewhat dystopian future the only subjects taught are search and mashups, and the teacher is paying just as much attention to firewall traffic as to the physical class, it seems to work. In fact, the teacher chides students who just sit there during lecture, rather than running relevant queries, etc. The generational dynamic is also explored, since several of the "remedial" adult students thrown in with a quite mediocre teenage cohort had actually been brilliant professionals only a couple of decades before.

I think that we think of it differently. I think (perhaps I'm wrong), that you think of it as garnering "information". I think that what we pull in comes in different forms - a look, a gesture, what's said, not said, implied - how the speaker engages with the audience. When the questions get asked - that gets interesting. Thinking about it, I have a greater comfort level with the backchannels during the question and answer period, but I know that people are going to do whatever they want. To me, there is a difference in how we engage each other when we are in a physical space. Virtual space has some of the qualities of a physical space, but it's also a little different - more flitting around. Perhaps you want to combine the interactions in a physical and virtual space. That's interesting. It's also interesting for me to think about I would present in front of a group of "key clickers" who don't look at me. That's a challenge, to present in front of people with different public styles. I prefer people to look at me when I present, so I'll have to think about how I'd engage the people who don't look at me.

I do take notes at a talk or a lecture, because it helps me to concentrate on the speaker. I do it because it helps me zone in, and stay in. If I want to look something up, I'll do it later, because the moment where the speaker is present - that moment will not come again.

Getting back to different styles, perhaps - as another poster noted - the expectations were just different, between different groups of people. Being in an audience is a form of public discourse. Perhaps your form of public discourse was different from some of the other members of the conference.

On teaching - one of the best teachers I ever had found a way to engage the class, by asking questions, and engaging the students. One thing followed up on another, and so you had to pay attention. The teacher was super nice about it, and didn't care if you used a laptop or other device, but it was important in the class to be there, in the class, engaged with the teacher and the students, real time. I always try to see how my teaching or presentations can be better, and I plan to use that technique when I teach, if I can. Sadly, it's not the sort of thing that I think you can use in presentations.

On multitasking - from what I've read - we can't pay attention to more than one thing at a time. Multitasking means zoning in and out of a variety of things, quickly. Sometimes it doesn't seem worth it to stay focused, on the one thing, but sometimes I think it does. When my surgeon was operating on my knee, I sure hope that there was some focus. That's what it's about for me (though I'm not a surgeon!), trying, and sometime failing, to be focused, to be in the moment.

Interesting post, and an interesting discussion.

Regards,
amarez - mszv

I see two different problems - disatisfaction with the traditional lecture format, and a desire from older people to receive genuine interactions from others.

The lecture lends itself to doodling, daydreaming, and general slacking off. The old model is no longer relevent today (or even in the past), as people are just as capable of self-directed or assisted learning. There is no partnership or a sense of discovery. It is a read-only format, with handraising a hack to get students to stop drooling on their notebooks.

The second, larger issue which plagues many people my age is the lack of ability to create genuine interaction with each other. I never felt close to people when they peer at me from their laptops. The design of laptops even makes sharing a struggle - you can't just bend it so that viewing or control can be shared. It is a solitary activity. There is nothing more disheartening than a sea of laptops in a coffeeshop, a place where ideas were frequently shared. Now, it is people working and sharing with people miles away and ignoring the person close to them, a magical moment of human interaction that has been missed.

Perhaps I should add that I am only 24 years old.

I am aware that this is a little bit of a tangent, but there is a point here that I think runs parallel to danah's post...

it pains me that profs come up with various schemes to deal with people using their laptops in class: It is a very ableist assumption that everyone has the choice of taking notes with a laptop or by hand. Some students with disabilities (such as myself) have to use a computer to take proper notes.

So, please, don't do #4 and make everyone that is using a laptop in class email the prof or the class as a whole at least two references to relevant documents online they've found during class. Many people already carry the assumption that students with disabilities are being lazy or milking it for extra gain. I, and others like me, don't need the added insult of being penalized with extra work because we don't happen to learn/function in the very limited ways that traditional education deems appropriate.
And so, in connection, it seems to me that to do anything otherwise seems contrary to the call for acceptance of the original post...

I came across this article and thought it was relevant.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090715/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_rim_canada_1

I think this is right on, you have to start early, the earlier the better.

The topic reminds me of this:
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/08/31/the_laptop_herr.html

After my long post - I realized - I'm so sorry - I think that I missed the obvious!

Remember, danah, how much you liked the public life of Italy - cafes spilling over with people? Well, that's what that means - you interact with people, the people in front of you. If you can't "interact", as in converse fluently in Italian, then you give them your physical attention. That's what you do. Maybe the younger Italians would be happy to be blogging, tweeting, IMing and not making eye contact (things do change), but for the older Italians, that would be rude and disrespectful.

We are also talking about Italy here. I realize it's been a number of years since I've been there, but, for all the modernity, this is more traditional culture, also a culture where interaction with people is important. Italians, by and large (always exceptions of course), are social. I also remember the Italians (and I was all over Italy, though it's been a number of years) as being very polite. This was the place with the most gracious cell phone manners in the world. When the Italians (big cell phone users) got or made a call, they were very discreet about it. Again, it may have changed, but electronics were not impinging on the public space. It's also traditional, in that you were dealing with older Italians, older than you, at least - people who didn't grow up surrounded by electronics and also grew up in culture of manners. So of course, given the culture and the age - that's what you, and all the other participants were expected to do - give them your physical attention. It wasn't a "one way street" - along with you paying attention to them speak, they would pay attention to you, when you spoke, even if their English wasn't very good. If you didn't speak Italian well, and had trouble following - that didn't really matter. Politeness demanded that you pay attention, in the traditional sense. Paying attention in the traditional sense means that you make eye contact, you watch the speaker, and you listen.

What you did was so very American, but then again, as far as I can tell, not unlike the Italians, who are so Italian, wherever they go (rampant generalization). In that way, Italians and Americans strike me as kind of the same. You weren't the social scientist, looking at the norms of behavior, like you do in your research. You expected the conference to follow your norms, instead of the norms of the conference. You were also so convincing, so articulate in your blog post, that I responded to what you were saying and forgot to think about the situation.

That's how I look at it.

Now I miss Italy.

I should note that the conference in Italy was international (predominantly European, talks in English) and that the man who criticized those of us on computers was not Italian. So my comments should be not be taken as a critique of Italians vs. Americans as this was not the dynamic of the conference or the disagreement at all.

I should also note that the conference was split pretty evenly down the line with two vastly different sets of expectations about norms of a conference. There were two "camps" if you will. The difference was primarily marked by academic discipline, not country.

Ah well - darn - what a nice idea I had, but information from you negates my theory! Thanks - didn't read what you said carefully enough.

That two camp thing is really interesting.

Speaking as someone who is *right now* going back to re-read a book, this time with the Internet in hand, and has already spent thirty minutes on the references on one page, I'm so with you.

I also get frustrated with the low bandwidth of public talks (as opposed to the high bandwidth of public talks and public conversations). But then, podcasts frustrate me the same way, so maybe I'm just a scanning sort of dork...

The communication classes I TAed this last winter and spring forbade laptop use in the lecture hall (though I allowed it in my sections). This was based on a couple of articles implicating computer use with overall decreases in attention and retention:

http://www.hci.cornell.edu/projects/pdfs%20of%20pubs/Multitasking_Hembrooke.pdf
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1342673

I had mixed feelings about this. I've been taking notes on a laptop since 2001 and love having a searchable and shareable record of my classes, but I'm also very bad at splitting my attention (despite otherwise showing signs of being part of this so-called digital generation) and having a laptop out just makes it so much easier to distract myself. In fact, I've had to discipline my use of communication technologies generally to be productive at all, in the classroom or out. As an erstwhile doodler, I can confidently say that doodling never interfered *that* much with my productivity or attention; in fact, it often enhanced it.

Recent interviews of iPhone users on Stanford campus had undergrads on both sides of the debate, as well. Some clearly disciplined their use, others embraced the technology. Both were aware of the other side and were generally open to what they considered "rude" being acceptable to others. Interpretive flexibility?

Anyway, I'm too tired right now to comment more cogently (or even coherently), but I wanted to throw those links up, in any case. Always the danger of catering to the average -- for the average student it might be detrimental, but for certain students it's clearly not!

Aesthetically, more gadgetry is not necessarily better. I am thinking about the notion of making your life into a work of art. Granted, there is something to say about an appealing aesthetic of clutter. However, the type of person that is becoming common, the one who juggles a laptop along with other devices made with little consideration to design, accompanied by a paper cup of coffee, all emblazoned with commercial logos, is in most instances anything but pleasing to the eye.

It is now a truism, "It is not the information but what you do with it." What does it really matter if you are able to retrieve an additional tidbit of information on a specific point made by a speaker or not? As you suggest Danah, it probably matters as much as our doodles do. Did people write manifestos for doodling? If we are in the business of thinking and creating, then our concern should be on the quality of our thoughts and creations.

People confuse doing with thinking and creating. By reading some of these comments you would think that tweeting, taking your computer to a lecture, or looking something up on the Internet was a revolutionary act in and of itself. Perhaps, as cyborgs become more common, we will be able to stop being enthralled by their novelty and judge them rather by the quality of their thought and art.

This is a great column, danah -- one of my favorites; thanks for your perspective on multi-tasking audiences.

danah,

Not that I know you at all personally, but I can just imagine you trying to practice meditation!

Here's a phrase I found in a book of proverbs you might enjoy:

To waste all day
in the busy town,
Forgetting the treasure
in her own house.

I wonder how much is gained and how much is lost by delaying "knowing?" Is "right now" more important than holding off, delaying gratification?

You've given us all much to think about. Thank you for sharing.

I work here at Linden Lab (Second Life) with JoRoan, and yes, we live in the cyber-future. I attend all my meetings in-world (online with all the other things at my disposal, and noone can see or hear me typing in another window unles I choose).

I lose my thread of understanding if I do email or scan IRC. So I knit simple projects during meetings. Which, well, is slightly more obtrusive than doodling in-person, but is much the same effect mentally for me, a non-sketching-enabled programmer.

It is nice to be able to tune out of meetings as needed without the social frowns, though.

Stanford is apparently having a Media Multitasking Workshop today! Dean Eckles is blogging it. (Dogfood, anyone?)

Oh, so recognizable, so very true! And so very sad, in fact.

The gap you spotted so well is often seen as 'generational' but I think it's more an attitudinal one. I know quite a lot of relatively young people who treat 'all these digital things' as entirely opposite to the 'true human relationships', and who therefore demonstrate a mix of disgust and hostility to any manifestation of the 'digital'.

Like yourself, my life is quite densely (and increasingly) populated with all kind of multiple 'digital layers', from blogging, to wikiing, to non-stop FriendFeeding, IM-ing, Second Lifing, World-of-Warcrafting, etherpading etcetc - and give me more, please! But all that adds to the richness of my life and my communication with people, not diminishes it.

Yet from outside it often seen as a distraction and escapism from 'real life'. "You better spend more time with your family instead of Second Life!', I hear all too often. "Let's have a true meeting, without laptops and chats!" How to explain them that the meeting will be much more productive and pleasant if it is enhanced with few more digital channels? How to explain that I often spend time in SL *with* my son, or raid in WoW *with* my wife, and that it doesn't prevent us from doing a lot of other 'real life' things but rather adds new dimensions to them?

The real problem is that I can't really explain it. There is a true vicious circle many of these 'anti-digital' people fall into: they never try any of those instruments, and therefore tend to buy negative rumors about them, and since these second-hand rumors further reinforce their negative attitude, they never try to try!

I guess, it is linked to a pathological fear of many people to find themselves in a position of n00bs, newbies who are keen to learn the new without a prefabricated judgments. Somehow this position of n00bness is severely stigmatized by our culture; most likely, the 'sociocybernetics professor' you mentioned in your post perceives himself as such an EXPERT that he can not even imagine entering any space where he would be lvl 1.

Cherish your n00bness. That's your chance to learn!

I was presenting this morning at BbWorld09 on "Weaving the Social Web into Learning: Blackboard as a Learning Portal", and used your post as an example of how faculty need to change. Thanks for sharing - this 59-yr old Net Gen-er agrees with you!

I am so down with keeping my laptop up during meetings. Meetings are so much more meaningful when I can google topics being discussed that I am unfamiliar with. And if it is a meeting that doesn't really involve me, then I can VPN to my desktop and finish the doc I left behind to attend said meeting.

Either way, my company wins. They are the winners, because I'm more- not less- productive because I have this little black HP appendage.

The comment below was written before I read all the other comments, which needless to say would cast my points in a different light. But, rather than revise, I'll leave it in "first impression" mode, as I think my points as I expressed them may still be of interest.

-Steve

"If I only had a dollar, for every song I've sung.
And every time I've had to play while people sat there drunk."

"Lodi"
-Creedence Clearwater Revival

I think this issue is really about the courtesy an audience owes to a performer. As the quoted lyrics suggest, this is a concept perhaps "more honored in the breach". However, I think the issue is worth looking at.

A speaker, like a performer in other genres, works hard to create a presentation unified in theme and concept. They work to create a particular expperience for their audience. For the audience to blatantly repurpose the presentation shows a certain degree of disregard (I had thought to say "contempt", but perhaps that's a bit too harsh) for the hard work and preparation of the presenter.

The whole reason that real music fans prefer a live performance over media is that in a live performance there is opportunity for immediate feedback betweenperformer and audience in real time. If you watch some live performances on You Tube you will see this occur. It is awesome!

Now, let's just suppose that I were privleged to be in the audience when Avril Lavigne performed her cover of Green Day's "Basket Case". Now, I suppose it wpould be conceivable to whip out my mobile tool of choice and access audio and/or video of the original Green Day performance for instant comparison. Arguably I might "learn more" by such means. (In real life this would never happen as I have a cell phone which I keep strictly voice only). But not only would such an action be rude to Avril, it would also diminish my experience of being "in the moment" with her as she performs.

Now back to the instance at hand. A competent speaker will watch the audience and receive cues from their outward and visible signs of the internal structure of their attention. They may use these cues to vary the pace or tone of their presentation in real time - exactly as a musician does at a live gig. When you focus elsewhere, you throw a monkey wrench into that process.

In my personal circumstances, I occasionally invite a friend of the complimentary gender out for coffee and conversation. Now, I am one of those people whio has somewhat of an inability to be "casual" in conversation. I normally structure sentences, or even entire paragraphs as I speak. Imagine my dismay as I'm working toward a point and have about 2/3 of the sppporting structure in place, and then their cell phone rings.

That is frustrating. Now imagine how much *worse* it is when they whip it out and make a call in the middle of my sentence.

I'm not in principle utterly opposed to the concept of mashup. Collaborative art can be a wondeful thing. But I think someone who seeks to add their own input to an experience designed by somebody else owes the originator the courtesy of experiencing it as designed first.

Now, I should say that all this rests on the assumption that the speaker has in fact been responsible and diligent in preparing a quality presentation. I understand that in academia there is a long tradition of diliberately boring presentations, to which those of junior status are required to pay unwavering attention as an act of masochistic submission. If you were to find yourself on the receiving end of something like this, then by all means use your wired paraphenalia to wiggle out from under. It certainly beats having to sleep with your eyes open. :)

But if the person has worked hard to make a good presentation, why not experience it as designed?

Just a thought,
-Steve

P.S. After reading the comments, I'll just add one point. I'm firmly in the camp of those who mourn the loss of unmediated communication and human contact. It's only a little bit of hyperbole to say that we are entering a dystopia of digitally enforced autism. No more touches, no more smiles, no more sighs, no more quirky looks, no more gentle whispers, no more thundering rages, no more humanity. We are throttled down to such of ourself as can be captured in a bitstream.

I don't know about you, but I don't *want* to be reduced to a bitstream.

-Steve

P.P.S.

I understand you sometimes attend the legendary "Burning Man" festival. Do you go wired?

To me this points out a much broader issue than simply using technology at a conference. The idea is that as technology becomes a larger part of all our lives, there need to be ways to define which environments the technology is appropriate and acceptable in.

The idea that simply because it is useful to _you_ is not enough. Obviously that needs to be respected, but still there has to be respect for other people (audience, speaker, performer) in addition to the environment you are in. The fact that the man next to you pointed out your laptop use may not have just been a sign that he didn't understand how useful it was to you, but also that it was indeed distracting to him for possibly other reasons (eg. typing, prominent digital display, loud laptop fan).

There are any number of disruptive technologies that are inappropriate in certain environments:

1) Mobile phones ringing at the movies, weddings, graduations, churches, etc. despite warnings to turn off your phone.

2) People who hold their digital cameras in the air for half of a concert despite the obvious fact the people behind them can no longer see and paid for the concert too.

3) The fact that digital displays attract your eye particularly when you are in a dark room. So instead of looking at the actual performers that you paid to see, you find yourself looking at someone else's phone or camera.

4) Hiking in some pristine setting and knowing exactly how many pictures the people next to you have taken because they don't know how to mute their camera. (Mind you this is marginally better than listening to someone's old school film camera rewinding the film.)

5) Flash photography in a museum that damages the art.

All these things point to a need for event venues and workplaces and governments to set a policy for how technology can be used. Obviously there are limitations in enforcing this, but doesn't change the fact that these things need to be addressed. For example, we've already seen laws related to phone calls and text messaging while driving mostly because of how it relates to other people.

Also, this points to a need for technology to be better designed to adapt to common environments (as your "cyborg" title suggests). This could be design changes such as a laptop with quieter keys which is potentially smaller and less distracting to those around you. But it could also be smarter technology that understands what is appropriate in a given setting. I could imagine a negotiated protocol between the device that you are using and the room you are in that _suggests_ what features you have available. This could lead to a smart camera that automatically knows that you can't use a flash in certain rooms in a museum. Or a mobile phone that understands it is in a movie theatre so it shouldn't ring.

Lastly, I don't think we are ever going to get it 100% right for everyone given that people have different perspectives of what is appropriate. I was reminded of this as I just sent my sister a link that wasn't safe for work. Still, certainly we can get a lot better at it.

PS. I loved your post for the points it does make. My friend's grandmother was recently complaining about a woman in a meeting who was texting. I certainly think we need to change our perspective on technology use. And I can say that I've distracted other people while I was the person doodling so certainly technology is not the only thing to blame.

Yes, the adoption of new technologies are often justified in terms of how they contribute to productivity. However, 'doing' often has little to do with 'creating'. You want productivity? Ants are productive.

Recent research is beginning to demonstrate that daydreaming is important for creative human thought and problem solving. It seems to me that such research could be used to make an argument for disconnecting from the Internet, scheduling in some unplugged moments. It could also be the case, however, that certain forms of online activity are more conducive to creativity than others. Perhaps doodling and aimless browsing have this in common: they both allow the brain a little freedom to create new connections.

The debate between adopters and anti-adopters will continue, I suppose. However, there is another question: What can you do with your digital device? Everybody can retrieve information (granted some better than others), but what novel thing can you create or think with it?

If doing art was as simple as adopting the use of the paintbrush, then nobody would be looking up Raphael on Wikipedia.

Law professors deal with the issue of technology use in their classrooms all the time. Some find it distracting while others do not. I don't think they are, but I do think that they can lead to some unforeseen risks.

If the writter attended for pleasure without the funding of another party and the expectation to learn the speakers message, have fun and only give a moderate portion of attention to the speaker. But if attending on someone else dime with the expectation of learning and using all the information in the future, give 100% attention. It's less about being bored or wanting to free associate in ADD heaven, and more about maintaining integrity in the working relationship. Meeting the performance expectations of the one who pays you, giving them the new information or performance they sent you there to receive may be mundane but nevertheless shows a more mature level of personal growth.

Reminds me of an interesting, thoughtful essay by N. Katherine Hayles called 'Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes'. Profession 2007, pp. 187-199 (13).

http://www.english.ufl.edu/da/hayles/hayles_hyper-deep.pdf

http://www.english.ufl.edu/da/hayles/hayles_hyper-works-cited.pdf

How would your approach change if the speaker expected the audience to engage in co-creating their lecture?

danah,

You rock!

You eloquently express the frustration and angst that a growing number of students and faculty feel about this disconnect: http://tinyurl.com/dgh6dy

Here's what my advisor (who actually introduced me to your scholarship) was thinking when she imposed her own ban: http://tinyurl.com/ml4k33. She's relaxed that for her grad students (thankfully), but I think she wishes it were different for her undergrads. She's not the "banning" type.

Nicole -

FWIW, I too find it unnerving to have eyes fixed on me during a paper or presentation, especially since I'm squarely in the "guide-on-the-side" camp even during conferences, so I like and expect a fair amount of give and take - I usually have a "runner" to collect questions/feedback from the more timid in the group, and I also rely heavily on backchannel chatter to inform future directions, etc.

I think this picture speaks a thousand words to the futility of trying to put the genie back in the bottle: http://tinyurl.com/ksulx6.

New evidence suggests that the brain does not take in, or retain information in the same way when multitasking...even though participants in studies thought they were retaining, they actually were not...paying full attention turns out to be important after all!

Good article, w/ results of scientific studies, MRI brain-scan stuff:

http://www2.nea.org/he/tanda.html

I think using a privacy filter on my laptop display and turning my display backlight down makes my computer use much less distracting to attendees sitting beside or behind me. It turns my display from being a TV flickering in the room into a private notepad.

I heard a joke once: Multitasking is like sex -- people are not as good at it as they think they are.

I think a backchannel is great for a conference presentation type of situation. It enables a conversation where the physical layout discourages or prevents one. But count me as old school when it comes to business meetings or conference calls. I consider meetings and calls to be situations where I have to pay attention closely, and I expect others to do the same. (And if it doesn't require that, then maybe that meeting is unnecessary.) If you're replying to someone's backchannel comment, you're missing the point I or someone else is making in the actual meeting.

I see people backchanneling every day ... on the road, where they are weaving all over, almost colliding with other cars, you know the deal. We had a train conductor backchanneling in LA -- that worked out well, yeah.

It's about context. Sometimes, sometimes, really paying attention to the physical world pays off.

Danah,

Just passed through your blog following a thread I was tracking on PdF. I find it enthralling.

I can recall in the early 90's really envying a colleague who sat in conferences (generally near the front) and read a paperback. I thought he wasn't listening most of the time but was surprised when on one ocassion he stopped reading the novel and commented to the speaker that he was wrong in part of a cross-correlation function that he used. From that moment I was aware of two things; namely: he was much brighter than the average attendee and he used the novel to help him multi-task.

For what its worth, I believe that the anti-computer attitude of your colleague at the conference reflects an arrogance often found in high ranking professionals and specifically when assymetric information flow is concerned. I used to lecture at a military college and ofen used the start up line that 'sleep is a legitimate form of criticism'.

I first came across backchannel when I visited the EBC at Redmond. It was fascinating that even back then in 2004, the EBC provided laptops for visitors specifically to enamble backchannel and enhance the EBC experience. I have found few other facilities with a similar ethos.

Totally agree that its an approach thing rather than a generational issue. I regularly check background facts during seminars/conferences and have a habit of doing it in meetings as well (primarily using a Blackberry) and I'm no spring chicken! However, I also believe that the benefits of social media channels cybercommunications during conferences are now starting to emerge, if somewhat slowly. Recent workshops and conferences I have attended have used twitter to track issues and raise questions, and online voting has been used quite successfully.

Finally, paying attention is not neccessarily all its cracked up to be. Your comnment about the value of the engagement and the added-value of backchannel makes for a much more personalised learning experience and I firmly believe we learn more by doing than s8imply listening and watching.

Thanks for stimulating such an interesting discussion.

Oh, boy... do I know how you feel. I'm also one of those people who perpetually wants to look things up on the web, no matter the context. Indeed, my first response when asked a question is usually some variation on "Just ask Google." I've been lucky enough to have progressive professors who understand the power of having a laptop in the classroom, esp. at the fingertips of dedicated and inquisitive students. But, unfortunately, I think I've been spoiled.

When you said "am I learning what the speaker wants me to learn? Perhaps not. But I am learning and thinking and engaging." it reminded me of something Edward T. Hall wrote in his book Beyond Culture:

"...language is not...a system for transferring thoughts or meaning from one brain to another, but a system for organizing information and for releasing thoughts and responses in other organisms."

This connects with something one of my mentors said a while back, that we don't teach subjects, but subjectivities. And I think once we begin to understand this more deeply, we will realize that the tangents students go off on in their heads during a lecture are unique and can be aided incredibly by the interwebz by allowing them to pursue their own lines of inquiry, ultimately enriching the learning experience. /soapbox

Great post, as always.

I sometimes tell people that there are four stages in the adoption of technology in higher education. They are
1. "What is that stupid thing the students are using?"
2. "Ban the device! If students use that, they will lose the ability to do things that students did in my day, and they may use it to cheat! "
3. "Damn It! If all the students have one, I guess I'll just have to allow them in class."
4. "Since my students started using it in class I find that I can teach about more important topics in more interesting ways."

Currently netbooks and cell phones are in about stage two.

I notice you are only posting positive affirmations of your own perspective here, Danah.

That senior academic took time out to meet with you and contribute. He could have just kept working on his next paper too. If you read back in the literature, people made just the same kind of fuss about wanting to be able to respond to e-mail instantly - and we observed negative results on team work when this happened. Human beings are good at reading attention from gaze - probably initially to avoid being predated, now to avoid being dissed.

Your language is violent - "bitch-slapped" indicates the need for approval you feel and your desire to be approved of in an academic publishing world. The violent affirmations of your followers show the same level of insecurity. Get over it. If you want to change the world and you think your way works best, go right ahead typing thru every meeting you attend. Just don't expect to get invited back - or to influence folks to adopt the stuff you are proposing.

I have become a "bad student." I can no longer wander an art museum without asking a bazillion questions that the docent doesn't know or won't answer or desperately wanting access to information that goes beyond what's on the brochure (like did you know that Rafael died from having too much sex!?!?!).

This nicely illustrates the drawbacks of your approach. You had a docent in front of you trying to tell you what is worthwhile about Rafael and his artwork but you're distracted looking up trivia about his life.

An expert (ideally) is making a case for what is important about a topic. When you google a topic, it's really easy to end up with a handful of whatever trivia just happened to catch your eye.

The internet makes us more informed, but at the same time it gives us a powerful illusion of being even more informed than we really are.

Hmmm. I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. One the one hand, I like to knit while I listen. I can drop the knitting and pick up a pen if I want to make a note. Lots of people find knitting to be at least as 'rude' as clattering on a laptop while a talk is going on. OTOH, I certainly can't listen while I'm surfing, reading wikipedia etc. My approach would be to make notes and look stuff up later. I guess I'm not as good at multi-tasking as I'm supposed to be (as a woman). As for people thinking that it's rude to a speaker to knit or surf, my reply is that many many speakers over years have been very rude to me by presenting mumbling, incoherent, disorganised, rambling lectures or talks. If a speaker isn't engaging an audience, it's not the audience who need to look at themselves. In summary, the speaker has the power to engage us or not; the audience has the right to not be engaged, or to express their engagement as they choose.

And Matt Schofield, danah's not posting what we write here, we are. Perhaps her fearsome reputation prevents people from disagreeing with her? :)

high school teacher here.
gosh - i wish your confidence to seek out learning with zest on my students. i fear we've boxed them up too much - for them to feel that freedom in school.

This experience of realizing you "want information at my fingertips now and always" contrasts with Aaron Swartz's reflections after 30 days offline: "Normally I feel buffeted by events, a thousand tiny distractions nagging at the back of my head at all times. Offline, I felt in control of my own destiny. I felt, yes, serene."

Are there other examples of people thinking through the self they have created to live in the online?

Like Sherman, I was at THATCamp, and the Twittering there really did add a lot of value to the discussion. Twitter led to discussions, discussions led to tweets, and it really helped us all communicate our ideas better-- not to mention that some people who couldn't make it could actually follow the conference in real-time via Twitter, blog posts, and even a Wiki, all created on-site during the conference.

I'm also on Livejournal, and most of my friends there are grad students and professors. Weirdly, when I talked about how nicely twitter worked to augment conversation, I found I was facing a lot of resistance from my friends-- from academics who blog, and even from a couple who work on New Media projects in the humanities.

I know that I can't listen *AS CLOSELY* when I multitask, and I try to not overdo it, but at the same time, when was the last time you went to a lecture and actually paid attention to EVERY. SINGLE. WORD?

For me, it's only ever happened a handful of times. Most of the time, lecturers gain and lose your attention many times in the course of a single lecture. Aren't you even more engaged if you're using your laptop to find supporting or conflicting data?

I've been playing with a pair of myvu "shades" plugged into an iPhone running an IRC client.
http://www.myvu.com/Myvu-Shades-personal-media-viewer-iPod-video-glasses-C25.aspx

Compared to looking down at the screen in my hand, I feel like I'm better able to pay attention to both the IRC channel and what's in front of me at the same time. For example, I walk into fewer things while manuvering through the supermarket or walking around town. I can do this because the shades are organized to place the screen in the bottom of my vision (think bifocals), with the straight ahead portion of my vision free.

Works with real time maps, too -- avoids the problem of missing a street sign because you were looking down at your device. Haven't tried it while attending a talk yet but that would be a good test.

Talking back is still hard. The iPhone is actually much worse than the previous generation of smartphones for this because it is hard to make touch gestures without viewing the screen. My windows mobile phone or G1 is much better here.

May be visiting MSR cambridge to say hi to Henry Cohn this week. if by some random chance happen to run into you (I don't believe we know each other) will be happy to show you.

certainly can't listen while I'm surfing, collector-solar.com reading wikipedia etc. My approach would be to make notes and look stuff up later. I guess I'm not as good at multi-tasking as I'm supposed to be (as a woman).

I'm lurking on you. Sounds weird I know coming from a 55 year old woman. The truth is I write a blog about teens. I live in Silicon Valley and I first saw you at the MacArthur research presentation at Stanford. You are one of the few people I know that has both in-depth computer experience AND a cultural/sociological background/viewpoint about how technology is used by youth. I was glad to see you on a panel this year at Blogher talking about technology use. You bring a vital and different perspective that I need in order to balance my "parenting" cap. I started my blog last year when it became painfully obvious to me that I wasn't keeping up with my teens use of technology, especially social media and I wanted to understand the why of it. I continue to write my blog for parents to provide a bridge. Many parents are either too scared of social media to let their kids use it (they use it anyway) OR they are completely hands off and end up not keeping vital communication channels open. So,I'm glad to see you're keeping your blog going - your viewpoint is so completely unique and different. You've taught me that young people process technology differently than adults who don't integrate as "smoothly". I seem to back channel pretty good though!

It's even worse for people like me who excel at multitasking. I am an exceptional musician who can play and sing complex lines at the same time. So, in social situations, I take personal offense when I am judged for not behaving like everyone else. To me, it's bad as being insulted for my skin color, because really what the authority figure is expressing is a complete ignorance of what kind of person I am and a reflexive dismal of my way of culture. For this reason I limit interaction with others in the real world to the consumer realm. The singularity makes this the longest upcoming decade in history.

Danah,
Coming into this posting very late. No excuse: I wasn't twittering or facebooking or.
First: absolutely love your posting and ecstatic that we live in this time.
But: as an old presenter (claim thriller), I have relied on the following techniques for *overpowering* the backgrounding phenom: showing at least 3 slides per minute; making every slide cognitive demanding; making every slide background transparent; talking faster than my slides; never saying anything I'm absolutely sure of (else how to say 'explore'?); repeatedly begging for participants to read my online stuff and THEN welcomely contacting me. I don't believe in the instant GROK that goes with the just-in-time-informed approach. That wouldn't make me a superficial person, would it?
best
Lawrie Hunter, out of the loop in remote Japan