Right now you’re probably wondering, “Evan, what the hell happened yesterday?” I posted a Treasure From The Collector’s Slumâ„¢ but there was no normal blog entry. You must think I hate you. Well, I only hate some of you. I apologize to the rest of you, but you have to believe me — I’ve been completely distracted by Farkle for the last twenty-four hours. Apparently you can play on Facebook now. I’m not normally one to spend time on anything Facebook-related — unless you count making “events” out of insignificant things — but the fact that I can play a pretty solid version of Farkle online is really exciting. It’s better than the iPhone versions (yes, I paid for and downloaded both variations) in that the scoring is more like the variation Ilya taught us way back in the day. Also, there’s the option of playing against friends online! This is what immediately attracted me to the game. Although, I’m just now realizing that my “chip count” hasn’t risen in about twelve hours, and I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get from 300 chips to the required 10,000 chips so I can play against another human. Sigh. Farkle, you’ve one again taken over my life.
I’m not concerned. It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. The Internet told me so. More specifically, New York told me so. In fact, New York told me this morning that being distracted is “a good thing!”
After opening his story with everything short of an apocalyptic prediction, author Sam Anderson puts aside his allegations of our collective mental obesity and focuses on whether or not our constant overstimulation has negative effects on our lives. A multitasking expert says, “I think it’s going to get a lot worse than people expect…people aren’t aware what’s happening to their mental processes in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.” Well, that doesn’t bode well for my Farkle addiction — which is constantly being interrupted to check my various e-mail inboxes and my fantasy baseball team — now does it?
To Anderson, the Internet is a Skinner box in which we are rewarded not constantly but randomly. I’m apt to agree with this, as being distracted while writing a blog post or responding to e-mails is never entirely forgotten once I’ve been distracted (until Farkle last night, of course). Instead, as Anderson points out, we are all at the whim of the Internet’s most defining feature: “neverending shots of positivity…in unpredictable cycles.” An IM from an old friend, a YouTube video of kids playing Mario Kart, the new William Fowler Collins album, an e-mail from a blog reader or PR stooge, a flashy advertisement banner sitting atop an article I’m trying to respond to…these are the “rewards” in our Skinner boxes. As the author states, nobody ever spends all day clicking virtual levers in search of new rewards. They just find us at random.
That said, Anderson makes a brilliant point at the end of his article. “Focus is a paradox — it has distraction built into it. There two are symbiotic; they’re the systole and diastole of consciousness. Attention comes from the Latin ‘to stretch out’ or ‘reach toward,’ distraction from ‘to pull apart.’ We need both.” He explains this through an allusion to William James and his famous focus exercise. I believe that it is true the human mind cannot actually focus on any one thing for more than a few seconds. Staring at a computer screen becomes staring at a part of the screen, a pixel or some tiny fiber that’s become wedged behind the screen, or the screen as juxtaposed to whatever is behind it, or the way the backlight changes when you stop touching the keyboard, etc. etc.. In Anderson’s opinion, the wisest minds among us will not abandon distraction but embrace it, and that those of us who can adapt or move onto new things the most rapidly will actually become the dominant members of our species. It’s like that self-help book Who Moved My Cheese?, which teaches that change is good and we need to enjoy it and adapt quickly. If a person is dead-set on remaining focused and attentive, that person will invariably become stuck in a static, mundane existence. Change is good. Distraction is good. Overstimulation and multitasking do have their benefits.
In conclusion, I wish the magazine’s website would allow me to do their weekly crossword puzzle. It has always been one of my favorite puzzles. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for more Farkle…Thanks for the quick pick-me-up, New York!
