Saturday, April 3, 2010
Attention Span
That last made me think about the attention span of Ghulf Genes visitors (I don’t mean you, Rare Exception) which is just long enough frantically to click on something else. But I better stop now lest I lose that most precious of all commodities, the momentary gaze of someone unknown, from somewhere undetected, brought here by Google’s magic or by Next Blog, and rushing on at light speed to bestow a nanosecond of his or her weightless attention on some other breathlessly quivering cobweb…
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Interesting you should write such an entry, since I was thinking about this subject this week too. I read in the March 26th edition of the Michigan Catholic the following article: "Synod office: Homilies less than eight minutes recommended". The article goes on to say "Among the guidelines' many helpful suggestions...is that 'the homily in general should not go over eight minutes -- the average amount of time for a listener to concentrate.'"
ReplyDeleteNow, I will have to admit that from time to time I do space out when Father is saying his homily, but if the average adult listening attention span is only 8 minutes, does that mean that when students sit in lecture halls for an hour, that they will only comprehend the first 8 minutes of a lecture? Is this indicative of our TV watching culture, I wonder? After all, TV programs are broken up into short intervals interspersed with commercials so the watcher doesn't really have to concentrate all that long.
And, as you point out here, what does surfing the internet do to human's overall reading attention span?
I must say, in checking in here today, after not visiting in several, I noticed that the last few posts were all shorter than usual...
ReplyDeleteCoincidence?
The thought occurred: if they don't stay long to read, why should I stay long to write?
ReplyDelete