Considering it was our first week, this lecture wasn’t too heavy duty. After an extensive introduction to the course, including time management tips, work habits that should be kept, Brian’s metaphors and an unexpected spoiler to the first season of Game of Thrones, we continued to the concepts of hyper attention and deep attention cognitive modes.
Hyper attention was characterised by N. Katherine Hayles as “switching focus rapidly among different tasks”, as opposed to deep attention, which requires more concentration for long periods of time.
Personally, I am feel more inclined to be in the hyper attention cognitive mode. Though it was discussed in class that there had been several studies actually proving that this is no where near effective, I feel like hyper attention comes more naturally to the younger generation, including mine. We’ve grown up adapting to the newly-found technologic era, which can be characterised as a rapidly changing environment. I’ve already found myself listening to music or wanting to start on a new project, or even continue playing Pokemon Yellow, which only came out last week. Unlucky me.