Week 1 – Connection

This weeks lectorial was quite hard-hitting I think for a lot of people who had the privilege of being present. We discussed at great detail Katherine Hayles’ study ‘Hyper ad Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”. It explained how the latest generation are raised around a huge amount of different forms of technology and communication, so it makes sense to update the current educational curriculum to compensate for this. The reading states, and I can relate to this, that kids are finding it harder to get into a state of ‘deep attention’, where they can focus on one task at hand and concentrate efficiently enough to channel all of their information into that one task. ‘Hyper attention’ refers to when one gets distracted a little easier and can’t focus all of their information on one issue, rather splitting their attention on to many different tasks.

This really spoke to me, as i’ve definitely noticed myself suffering from a severe lack of an attention span for many recent tasks, including homework. I usually check my instagram about ten million times before I complete a simple task like writing up a blog post. I find it hard to disconnect from the world in fear of missing out on some really important announcement or issue.

I never really thought of myself as a huge media user but maybe it’s time to seriously reconsider my own thoughts on myself. After having a 5-year break from studying and coming back as a slightly fatter and definitely lazier version of my younger self, it’s going to be interesting to see how I approach my studies this year.