Attention vs Distraction

Attention/Distraction

Living our lives amongst and through technology, it’s a wonder that we get anything done. It is so easy to become distracted and turn to Facebook or Youtube as a means of procrastination when we’re supposed to be doing uni work!! It is perhaps quite important then to practise habits of attention such as through yoga and meditation.

Social media has become the ultimate tool in blurring the lines between the ‘public’ and ‘private’, a type of publishing attention, especially for the lives of celebrities and micro-celebrities (such as on Twitter and Instagram). See, already a quarter a way through my blog post I’ve already checked Facebook 3 times, changed the song on iTunes twice and made a phone call!! Okay make that Facebook 4 times…

 

Distractions are all around us [Credit: The Uniter. http://uniter.ca/view/8494/%5D

The Commons

The commons act as an essential publishing means through which our attention is attracted or diverted and promotes a culture of creating, sharing and distributing creative works.

There are a myriad of social consequences of the commons; the media that shapes our attention that are supposedly private can sometimes have repercussions, such as apps like Snapchat where the photos are only supposed to last for 10 seconds or less but can actually be retrieved from the phone’s memory/archive.

Maybe we should keep it this way [Credit: Arik Hanson, http://www.arikhanson.com/2013/01/21/are-disposable-media-platforms-like-snapchat-and-poke-the-future-of-social-media/%5D