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General Software Discussion / Short Attention Spans with regards to Technology - Does it really exist?
« Last post by Paul Keith on September 28, 2009, 07:31 PM »After reading this thread, it makes me wonder whether short attention spans really exist -- to the point that you can blame it on short attention spans.
What really fuelled my doubt was the fact that if people really had short attention spans, then no one or almost everyone would be a lurker in the internet.
It shouldn't even reach these numbers.
At the same time, if people really had short attention spans, most of them won't often bother with creating noise to disrupt the signal ratio by throwing insults or even "detailed-lite" advises at a person who writes something long. There should just be on average people who act like editors and jot down what you should change and improve with your post (specifically rather than generally saying your posts are vague and long) and then there should be people who just flat out ignores a post.
Yet, for some reason, we short attentioned span beings can often even go to such points as type "Leaving/ignoring this thread. Thanks for ruining it." while our so-called short attention spans seemingly ignores the thread.
I'm putting this in the general software section because it seems useless as a question on it's own. Why would most people care what category we fit in? Most people type because they want to know or share something and hope someone can provide them additional data for their cause. Short attention span, long attention span. In software especially web apps, the end justify the means. Even if what it is justifying is the fact that you can read an entire set of 140 char. of different topics as opposed to 1 whole article on one topic of the same length.
That last sentence got to me.
It seems that in reality, you can't really write for short attention span people because they simply don't exist. Instead, what we have is a consumer attention span people who ignore things that don't benefit them and join things that do.
...and then you bank on this and hope you can ride the momentum so that even if your software didn't really start out the best, you have combined improvements plus peer pressure plus enacted a form of self-wage slavery by which "content creator activism" helps make the software the standard and continues to generate your market for you.
I don't just mean this for Web 2.0. Isn't MS Office used because there's no free alternative?
Then when there was a free alternative in OpenOffice, wasn't this used because it was free and not the best?
Isn't it kind of strange that when Wordpad is in front of you, our attention span is shorter. Yet with the same online interface for blogs, someone's attention span gets long enough to write an entire blog for life (or at least until they failed their expectations)?
Similarly from a reader's point of view, doesn't it seem weird that a person can read a long useful Amazon interview because it's the one that gets voted the most even in 1 star ratings but after 1 review, we can often get short attention span syndrome and not check an even shorter review if we're satisfied by that review?
When I think of these examples, it just makes me wonder if short attention span really exists or whether it just became a popular term because it seems to hit it close enough to an idea so that most of us don't need to think on the issue anymore when writing an article, developing a software user interface or some other unnatural way technology makes us view things. (For example, before the clock how much value did we put in seconds and minutes. Yet if that were proof of our short attention span, we'd have been unable to take advantage and see any value in seconds and minutes and we would merely drop those concepts in favor of just hours or 30 minutes.)
In the end, I want to know the answer because for people who have problems with communicating, every little correct detail counts more to the quality of my products (like say an article or a program or a media based story) compared to normal people who have less of this problem but require people like me to hold up to their standards.
What really fuelled my doubt was the fact that if people really had short attention spans, then no one or almost everyone would be a lurker in the internet.
It shouldn't even reach these numbers.
At the same time, if people really had short attention spans, most of them won't often bother with creating noise to disrupt the signal ratio by throwing insults or even "detailed-lite" advises at a person who writes something long. There should just be on average people who act like editors and jot down what you should change and improve with your post (specifically rather than generally saying your posts are vague and long) and then there should be people who just flat out ignores a post.
Yet, for some reason, we short attentioned span beings can often even go to such points as type "Leaving/ignoring this thread. Thanks for ruining it." while our so-called short attention spans seemingly ignores the thread.
I'm putting this in the general software section because it seems useless as a question on it's own. Why would most people care what category we fit in? Most people type because they want to know or share something and hope someone can provide them additional data for their cause. Short attention span, long attention span. In software especially web apps, the end justify the means. Even if what it is justifying is the fact that you can read an entire set of 140 char. of different topics as opposed to 1 whole article on one topic of the same length.
That last sentence got to me.
It seems that in reality, you can't really write for short attention span people because they simply don't exist. Instead, what we have is a consumer attention span people who ignore things that don't benefit them and join things that do.
...and then you bank on this and hope you can ride the momentum so that even if your software didn't really start out the best, you have combined improvements plus peer pressure plus enacted a form of self-wage slavery by which "content creator activism" helps make the software the standard and continues to generate your market for you.
I don't just mean this for Web 2.0. Isn't MS Office used because there's no free alternative?
Then when there was a free alternative in OpenOffice, wasn't this used because it was free and not the best?
Isn't it kind of strange that when Wordpad is in front of you, our attention span is shorter. Yet with the same online interface for blogs, someone's attention span gets long enough to write an entire blog for life (or at least until they failed their expectations)?
Similarly from a reader's point of view, doesn't it seem weird that a person can read a long useful Amazon interview because it's the one that gets voted the most even in 1 star ratings but after 1 review, we can often get short attention span syndrome and not check an even shorter review if we're satisfied by that review?
When I think of these examples, it just makes me wonder if short attention span really exists or whether it just became a popular term because it seems to hit it close enough to an idea so that most of us don't need to think on the issue anymore when writing an article, developing a software user interface or some other unnatural way technology makes us view things. (For example, before the clock how much value did we put in seconds and minutes. Yet if that were proof of our short attention span, we'd have been unable to take advantage and see any value in seconds and minutes and we would merely drop those concepts in favor of just hours or 30 minutes.)
In the end, I want to know the answer because for people who have problems with communicating, every little correct detail counts more to the quality of my products (like say an article or a program or a media based story) compared to normal people who have less of this problem but require people like me to hold up to their standards.
but seriously this forum is so welcoming of newbies that I didn't know who all of you are until I remember a specific thing you said.