In. at. ten. tive. ness.
Sound bites, shortened attention spans... We're so used to it that it seems normal. Fact is, this ability to handle large amounts of information is a skill, and we delight in learning, and showing off, new skills. So we become virtuosos of input-output. During a president's fellatilistic troubles, everyone marveled at his ability to "compartmentalize." Now we're all practicing our compartmentalization skills. It's like: Nobody had ever played octaves as fast as Horowitz did 75 years ago; now every music school graduate can do it. Yes, we're becoming very good at juggling cell phone, e-mail, Palm, GPS, DLT, 500 cable channels, Quake, eBay, real-time stock trading, ATM's, and even postage stamps from your own printer. In a previous generation, a person by the name of E. Power Biggs became a household name because he could use both hands AND both feet and make a pipe organ do things nobody else could manage. Now, moving through the maze of our lives with multi-multi-tasking ease, even the least put-upon among us make Mr. Biggs look like a fumbling amateur. But. Observing the flow of personal interaction for some time now, I've come to the conclusion that it, as Robby used to say, does not compute. What I see happening is a tsunami of de-personalization. The brave new digital world is training us to see each other as sources or receptors of data, and if conversation drifts away from hard data into soft, life-reality, the dreaded tune-out occurs. MEGO* happens. I notice it again and again. These digital days, as a conversational partner, you switch to the personal mode at your own risk. Especially troubling is the fact that I see it happening in one-on-one conversations. Even between people who have some fairly strong emotional commitment to each other. This has been building for a while, of course. A lot of the humor in Seinfeld came from the usually unexamined, unacknowledged conflict between the demands of the characters' city lives and the unexamined, unacknowledged needs of their old, human hearts. Except now it's getting worse. A lot worse. Sure I'll sit still for a hit of Elian's pain, but real soon I've gotta find out how my shares of Cisco are doing. Sure I'll even grok briefly on your reaction to the biopsy you had last week, but but don't press it, because my pager just vibrated and I know it's my soon-to-be-ex-spouse's lawyer setting up the negotiation meeting. And by all means tell me about the great, great indie film you saw last night at 2 a.m. on satellite, but don't expect me to share your enthusiasm, or remember the name of the movie for more than five seconds, because I just remembered I forgot to synchronize my Palm and my laptop this morning. If you start in on how well your rose bushes are doing this year, I may even smile, but it's only because roses reminded me of Rose Bowl which reminded me of a big project I got last year by giving the client two tickets on the 50-yard-line at the Super Bowl. Now. Where were we...? Well. It can't have been as important as any of the 14 items on my to-do list, or the 8 call-back messages waiting for me in my cell phone, or the 11 hours of "Millionaire" ready for me to watch on my TiVo. *"My Eyes Glaze Over." The term originated with editors, who would jot "MEGO" at a place in a manuscript where they felt the writer was losing the reader's attention.
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Yep, we're going faster, no doubt about it. Faster on
the freeways, on the Internet, in franchise food outlets. A generation that once made fun
of parent's purchases of Reader's Digest condensed bestsellers now routinely buys and
listens to abridged audio books. Disney holds Fantasia 2000 to 75 minutes,
including such manglings as a three-minute version of the first movement of Beethoven's
Fifth, because audience surveys showed nobody'd sit still for longer stuff.