Here are some treats from the Columbia Journalism Review. One of our tasks in this class is to consider not just how media impact messages--things we may wish to say or hear--but how media impact us, our thinking, and our relationships with other human beings.
The video clip below is a short description of the research Maggie Jackson is doing on our ability to pay attention to the world around us. Watch the clip and consider two different ways we can apply our mental energy: in a focused, precise way, or in a diffuse and complex way. We can think of it as the difference between meditation and multi-tasking.
The structure of digital media and the aggressive way advertising solicits our attention pulls our mind into a natural state of diffusion--our thoughts change rapidly, and no thought remains very long.
The above photo: Scientists quantifying the mental energy of a Buddhist monk meditating. source: TheBuddhistblog.blogspot.com
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