Appetite for Distraction: 5. The Future of Attention
Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.In this final episode, he considers where our media consumption might be headed. Many are concerned about smartphone addiction and a disintegration of public discourse, but others see a brighter future and our current times as a turning point to a world where the capacities of technology are used to benefit of society.Matthew speaks to a former tech engineer who has become a philosopher and activist on attention, a historian who believes that our current era has many precedents, a psychologist who is wary of headlines about collapsed attention spans and a behavioural economist who can see a way that our society will adapt to the digital world.Contributors:James Williams, author of Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy
Matthew Sweet, Historian and Broadcaster
Professor Pete Etchells, Psychologist, Bath Spa University and author of Unlocked: The Science of Screen Time and How to Spend it Better
Michael Muthukrishna, Associate Professor of Economic Psychology and author of A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of who we are, how we got here and where we are going.Presenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Sam Peach
--------
15:26
Appetite for Distraction: 4. Attention Shortfall?
Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.In this episode Matthew traces the inexorable rise of shortform video and investigates its success. He asks what the increasing popularity of this type of media might mean for our attention and finds out about the people using for purposes that may have surprised Neil Postman.Apps such as Tik Tok, Youtube and Snapchat are ubiquitous and for many have become the chief way that they consume media. What does watching shorter videos mean for the content, and how do these apps change our habits and possibly, our brains? The popularity of this medium has driven traditional institutions that are concerned with public affairs to embrace shortform video. So what's the result? Matthew finds out.Contributors:Dr Zoetanya Sujon, University of the Arts London
Dave Jorgenson, Senior Video Journalist, Washington Post.
Communications and Media Society, University of LiverpoolPresenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Sam Peach
--------
14:27
Appetite for Distraction: 3. Medium and Metaphor
Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention. In this episode, Matthew analyses the medium through which we consume so much our media, the smartphone, and asks how whether it changes the nature of how we read, watch and interpret the world around us.Matthew looks into the culture of smartphone use around the world and finds out what we can interpret from the growing use of the devices, particularly among younger generations. He looks into the technological advancements in the smartphone that have driven the most change, and considers how information consumption on a phone changes our approach to attention as opposed to the television or a book.Contributors:Gloria Mark, Chancellor's Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine and author of Attention Span: Finding Focus for a Fulfilling Life
Daniel Miller, Professor of Anthropology, University College LondonPresenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Sam Peach
--------
14:58
Appetite for Distraction: 2. Have We Always Been Distracted?
Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.In this episode, Matthew looks into history to uncover different approaches to focus. He finds out where the idea of 'attention' came from, whether there has always been a fear that humanity's ability to focus was declining, and what the historical relationship of technology to distraction has been.He hears from the historian of science D Graham Burnett. Burnett has explored different philosophies of attention across the ages and is an advocate for a change in behaviours regarding our attention today. Professor Nilli Lavie, of University College London's Attention Research Laboratory, provides an insight into modern scientific views of attention.Matthew looks for answers in a community renowned for their ability to focus...monks. Historian Jamie Kreiner has uncovered how early Christian monks thought about distraction in her book 'The Wandering Mind'. Jamie reveals that there is more to connect the monks of the first millennia with our technological world today than we might think.Presenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Sam Peach
--------
14:22
Appetite for Distraction: 1. Postman's Prophecy?
Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.In this first episode, he seeks answers in the work of the media theorist and educator Neil Postman. Forty years ago Postman wrote 'Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business'. Postman feared that the rise of television had created a world where the image became more important than information, and that democracy was in danger to becoming entertainment.Postman cited the author Aldous Huxley as a key influence. Huxley's novel 'Brave New World' depicts a World State where citizens are engineered to focus on pleasure rather than the challenges of life and society. Huxley feared that tyranny may appear not through censorship, but due to "man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."Matthew speaks to Andrew Postman, Neil Postman's son, and Aldous Huxley's biographer Uwe Rasch, to ask what the ideas of the two writers might mean for us today, in a world where media and entertainment are at our fingertips 24/7. Has the prophecy of either Postman or Huxley come to pass?Presenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Sam Peach
UK