dotRED is comprised of industry professionals from advertising, marketing and
technology backgrounds. We listen to you and help drive your business forward.

Hey You!

If you’ve made it this far and are still compelled by the text that appears on the screen, you may well be a member of a dying breed. There is healthy debate regarding the way computer-use is changing the way we think and behave, and whether or not it’s a good thing.

The decision seems split; Bill Thompson (independent journalist and contributor to Digital Planet, BBC World Service) writes that some lament their declining ability to hold their concentration toward a lengthy, well constructed argument appearing over several thousand words.

Others meanwhile relish the “bite-size” intelligence gathering and view this method to be at least equal or superior to print-based culture, citing that they can feel themselves “getting smarter” as they perform bricolage (the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available - wikipedia.org).

Developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf has an insight about how fundamental the difference is between page- and screen-culture: “reading is not an innate ability for humans but something we have to learn how to do, and there is no reason why different forms of literacy should not emerge as new technologies do.”

Our virtual obsessions with Google and search engines of the like may stem from the idea that our preconceptions are less likely to be challenged. To clarify this, Jean Piaget (Swiss developmental psychologist) suggests two methods by which children learn: “The first is assimilation, where new knowledge fits into existing conceptual frameworks. More challenging is accommodation, where the framework itself is modified to include the new information.”

So in this Brave New World of bite-size battles for your attention, any piece of information or entertainment that rubs you the wrong way simply won’t be assimilated. Still paying attention?