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Continuous Partial Attention
ubercombatwombat writes "While answering my softphone and checking my mail simultaneously I ran across the following article by Steven Levy. In it he writes about a speaker named Linda Stone and something she called "Continuous Partial Attention." I finally had a phrase for the reason I turn off wi-fi, asked people to turn off their cell phones and put away their crackberrys when I am speaking to a group. I suffer from this too. Starting today I am going to do something about it, brb."
Okay, this is getting a little ridiculous, so maybe I should clarify things a bit, although I'd be the first to mod this offtopic given half a chance, but since half the thread I started has gone that way, what the hell?
So here goes. I just thought I should clarify: I was not trying to use a slashdot post as an in-depth vehicle for a discussion of my love-life. I simply referenced in passing a real-life example without giving any depth, background, or context. I agree with the posters who are saying things like "don't expect to conduct your relationship over IM," because, hey, that would be one weird relationship. And I don't expect that. That wasn't my point. My point was that , even though the whole point of IM is to enable conversation, it is impossible to have a real good conversation with someone who is IMing tons of people simultaneously.
I'm not trying to discuss my girlfriend or how much attention the average man needs from a significant other and can we find an equation to determine how many people we can IM and still meet this and while we're at it let's do some statistical analysis of response times and number of sweet nothings. That's not it, people. My point was just this: sometimes people talk to lots of people and that is not as focused as talking to one person.