IP8 - Attention

For this IP, I created an infographic that shows how my attention was used for 12 hours on Friday, October 20th, 2023. I had to take a day off and go to another city for the weekend with my wife because my father-in-law is at the hospital. The League of Legends Worlds tournament also happened to be streaming. I don't even play the game, so at the end of the day Friday, I was quite surprised at how much time I spent watching the tournament. If attention is nothing but "a series of tasks performed attentively," then I can certainly say that the largest task of the day I performed attentively throughout the day was non-productive (Citton, 2017). This worries me a little, especially if we posit that attention is individuating. If who we become really is defined by what we focus on, then today tells me I am well on my way towards becoming a Web 2.0 couch potato, also physically manifesting via noticeable weight gain pointed out to me by relatives at the hospital when I was visiting my father-in-law. As if becoming a couch potato is not enough, by watching League of Legends for over 4 hours, I've resigned myself to being a cog that fulfills the market-oriented goals of Riot Games, the company that created the game. The more people watch, the more YouTube pushes it to more people to watch, and this all eventually translates into corporate profits for both YouTube and Riot.

Educationally, I find focused and uninterrupted attention to be the most important. Throughout the day, this type of attention occurred twice: when I was editing the essay on a train, and then when I was working on ETEC510 with my headphones on after lunch. In both instances, I attribute my ability to focus for a prolonged period to a change in the physical environment (being on a train), and the creation of an artificial environment (putting on noise-cancelling headphones). Both these environments allowed me to go into a state of flow and complete the work efficiently. Those would be the only two durations of the day that I would classify as focused attention. All other durations, whether I was multi-tasking or not, I would classify as distracted attention. The reason is that I did not make the intentional effort to isolate what I was doing attentively, from what could distract me from performing the task. Even when I was watching Worlds, I would look around at the TV, or at other people in the room, or listen in on others' conversations, or announcements on the loudspeaker at the station. I was in a state that was welcome to interruptions. Notably, this aligns with the idea that attention isn't just about our immediate sensory environment, but also media and technologies in a broader context. The popularization of social media, the invention of noise-canceling headphones, and dynamic advertisements in elevators all work together to shape what we do with our attention.

Below, I've created an infographic that summarizes how I spent (which I realize is an economic term as I write this) my attention. Below the infographic is the raw data I saved in Excel.

Infographic:

Raw Data:

References:

Citton, Y. (2017). Introduction and conclusion: From attention economy to attention ecology. In Y. Citton, The ecology of attention. John Wiley & Sons.