I feel like N. Katherine Hayles has purposefully constructed this piece “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Minds” in a protracted way to act as a an experiment in a way. If a bunch of people sat down to read the piece, you would be able to separate individuals based on their primary cognitive functions of their brain i.e deep or hyper attention. A lot of the time while I’m studying, I like to play some atmospheric music in the background. I’m studying and interacting with music, so I’m multitasking? Or, am I creating an appropriate environment for deep attention to commence. I suppose, like anything it comes down to the individual. I think social media is to blame for this change in cognitive modes over the generations. Not saying it’s a bad or good change, it’s just a difference in the way society interacts with one another, and the way we have reacted to this change is to switch how our brains collaborate with the information being provided by these social media sites. Making reference to the point on audience responsive time to an image over time. Will our brains one day develop enough to interpret something that was considered only accomplishable through methods of deep attention in half the time? Could hyper attention lead our brain processors in that direction?
