Monday, March 2, 2009

Blogging, the Bauhaus, and Short Attention Spans

Last week I walked into my Friday afternoon section of History of Art and Design II to find a number of students busily engaged in reading--or trying to read--my blog. Specifically, they were trying to fathom my latest post on Owl's Farm, Gardeners and Cobblers and Tailors, Oh My. Of all the posts they could have been reading, that might have been a good one (I do have fashion design and fashion merchandising students in the class), but I heard a sigh as I walked into the room: "But she writes so much!"

I recommended to this sweet person (she really is charming, and tries very hard to keep up with what I dish out) that she read my obituary for Biscuit instead, but by that time we needed to get started on a film about the Bauhaus and on talking about final design projects. But the episode made me wonder about how much shared information and background is required for students and their teachers to be able to communicate ideas within the blogosphere.

One thing I decided before I even began writing on The Farm was that my posts would consist of well-considered essays rather than blurby little snippets of opinion. I would only post if I wanted to articulate some idea, or to express a view on those situations that seemed worth comment; I would think them through carefully and research them if necessary before I opened my mouth, as it were, online. I also vowed never to dumb down my vocabulary or message in order to draw more readers. At the same time I knew that I wanted to offer a tempered viewpoint that might resonate with people who otherwise might not always agree with me. My blog was, then, going to appeal to readers like me, with varied interests and fairly open minds.

Some of my first readers were students who had suffered through more than one class with me, and with whom I had already established frequent e-mail correspondence. Most were upper-classmen and women or those who had already graduated and were out pursuing the careers I hope I helped them prepare for. I also attracted a few Canadians and Australians, with whom I seem to have more in common than Texans, as well as fellow skeptics and even some more religious folk who appreciated my not running roughshod over their beliefs (at least most of the time). Some commented on the blog, some e-mailed me, some discussed the posts with me in person. Conversations ensued, which is what I wanted in the first place.

But the inability of many of my students to stay with a long (or long-winded) essay is somewhat disappointing. It's also evidence of an increase of shorter attention spans (which I blame, in part, on their having been raised on Sesame Street and commercials), and a decrease in the number of words in standard twenty-something vocabularies.

And things will only get worse if we keep partitioning our students' brains into compartments that look like multimedia screens or CNN broadcasts. If fads like Twitter (no I will not post a link; I'm trying to forget that it exists) persist, attention spans will ultimately be truncated into 140 character bursts, just as Sesame Street trained millions of two-year-olds to pay attention for 1.5 minutes, and commercials narrowed that down to 30 seconds.

I've even found myself affected by this modern urge to get to the point immediately, with no rumination, no thinking-through: the need to come up with an answer in a "blink." Not long ago, I picked up George Eliot's Middlemarch, one of my favorite books ever, and snuggled down for a good long read. I knew that the novel takes some 250 pages to begin to come together, and for Eliot to start spinning her tale. But this time I wasn't really ready. I kept reading ahead, looking into later chapters, and essentially spoiling it for myself. Even though I already knew the outcome, I was impatient to get on with it. I can't even imagine a single one of my students who would be willing to work his or her way through this novel for the first time--at least not when they can go to NetFlix for a video version that cuts out all the "unnecessary description," as I've heard them say even about Tolkien.

My reluctance to buy into the latest techno-gizmo or web-sensation isn't helping. Even though I'm having some fun with the new apps I've added to my iPhone (now nearly a year into its two-year contract), I can't play a game (I only have two) for more than a minute or two. It's just a silly way to spend time. The light saber sound effects are cute, but now that every Star Wars fan with an iPhone has it, about the only thing we can do with it is have silly duels in the hallway. I do belong to a couple of online forums (properly termed fora, but I've learned how to choose my battles), but I will not, under any circumstances open a Facebook or MySpace account, won't go anywhere near Twitter (I only like tweets from birds, and quite frankly don't care to know when my congressman plans to scratch). I haven't joined LinkdIn despite numerous invitations (all from people I'm already "linked in" with in some way, and who have my e-mail address). I'm happy to take advantage of Google's many free services (like Blogger and the aforementioned e-mail account), but I have to draw the line somewhere.

When so-called social-networking and communication websites start taking the place of real conversation, and when sound bites substitute for substance, we're in trouble. When the trivial and banal take the place of real information, we're laying the ground for a future characterized by mindless, contextless blips of miscellaneous data. Reality TV and Twitter both seem to be the products of the same alien plot to disintegrate human minds.

And so a plea to my impatient students: take the five minutes or so required to slog through one of my posts, if only occasionally. You might learn something interesting, but if nothing else it will show you how to express a sustained train of thought, how to explore a path arising from curiosity, or just how to spend a few quiet moments reflecting on something that we will then have in common.

The students of the Bauhaus, about which my own students learned last week, had none of the electronic gadgets we now take for granted. Shunted from one city to another as the Nazis became more and more afraid of what imagination and creativity might mean to the future of the Third Reich, the students and instructors made do with what they had, and created the modern design school. Without them, our school wouldn't even exist. What made the enterprise successful, however, was the marriage of physical expertise and creative thinking--talents we're in danger of losing if we spend too much of our time plugged into our iPods and too little time just letting ourselves be curious.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post, and yes I actually made it through the whole thing (although I admit it was difficult).

Yes many of us have attention spans way too short (I can even name a couple of teachers who fit this category) but many times that can't be helped. The best thing to do is to make the short attention span work in your favor whenever possible. My wife and I constantly argue about this, she sends me to do a household chore and on my way to do said chore I invariably find something else that I can do "on the way" and before you know it chore has led to chore and I have a long list of completed chores but the original one is half done. At which point my wife is thoroughly upset about the half done chore completely ignoring the long list of completed chores done. She calls it my ADD, I call it work simplification.

We shouldn't necessarily ignore the latest technology because of its imperfections. While I agree reading the cliffs notes of "Great Expectations" or watching the movie is not the same as reading the original novel, isn't it better than not reading it all? Yes our attention spans have gotten shorter, but our schedules have gotten fuller. Few of us could possibly find the time to dedicate to reading one of the classics, we don't have big chunks of spare time, out spare time comes in the form of a few minutes here and there.

Which is why social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook are actually a good thing. Yes it would be better to have the conversations with your friends, and we still do at times, but if you have only a few minutes there is no guarantee your friend will be free in those same few minutes. But i can go to their Myspace, look at their most recent pics, view any of their latest blogs, view posts by some of their other friends and get a feel of how they're doing and what's happening in their lives, and i can send them a message that they can read when they have their spare time. I have cousins I've only had time to speak to a couple of times the past ten years, but with Myspace we've been able to keep track and keep touch much easier. I have a place to display my thoughts and opinions and to have conversations (albeit ones that take several days of back and forth messages, but conversations none the less), I have even "met" and had conversations with people solely on that site from different parts of the country that otherwise I would never have known. They are a great way that information and ideas can circle the globe with no restraints of borders. A Myspace or Facebook account isn't that much different from having you're own personal website and blog, which most of us can't really justify the hosting fee when you can get basically the same thing for free from the social networking sites.

I have developed one problem with these sites however. There are too many. When I just had the Myspace things were grand, I was able to keep up with friends and family much easier, but over the course of the past couple of years for one reason or another I end up getting dragged into a new one. Now I have a Myspace, a Facebook, a Flikr, LinkedIn and Plaxo. They all have their advantages, I have some friends who use one and not another and vice versa. So cutting one out is almost like cutting that group of friends out. So now I'm spending too much time checking emails from my various accounts not to mention my personal yahoo and work emails, at least until some entrepreneur develops a software that monitors and updates them all from one central location.

So yes technologies do create some problems and have some drawbacks but there are distinct advantages as well. My point is we just need to find a happy medium, while our attention spans are shorter we are able to get more done. After all my lunch I had caught up with over half a dozen friends and read a very interesting blog, all during breaks from work.

Many thanks for the great read and listening to my rambling which probably makes little since to anyone without my particular brand of ADD. And as always I apologize for my poor grammer and non-existent punctuation. :)

Wayne B.

Owlfarmer said...

Thanks for the very thoughtful and very welcome response, Wayne. I miss your input in class a great deal--and this is kind of the next best thing.

Two small comments: seeing a movie version of a classic can be a good thing--but it's an interpretation, and one you would not necessarily come up with if you read the book. Cliffs notes and the like are not an acceptable alternative, because they're inevitably superficial and lacking in any real insights about the text itself. Better to take on the work itself (leave it on the back of the toilet if that's all the time you can muster!), and read it slowly.

The other remark is that by devoting all that time to web networking technologies, you're actually depriving yourself of time to yourself--something we all need if we're going to be creative, innovative designers. My advice is to choose one or two, and tell your friends what you've done. If they're really your friends, they'll go where you go. Or, and since you've opened the account to comment here, start blogging. You're an articulate guy, and probably have a good deal to say about a number of things. Fire it up and tell your buddies you won't have time to tweet because you'll be too busy writing the next classic essay on design theory!

Anonymous said...

Very good points as usual. Great idea on the sites and blog, I may just do that... after school of course. :)

Martha Z said...

I've made it through several of your posts, your students don't know what they are missing.
I do not twitter. In spite of Scott Simon of NPR's urging, I don't care to go there. Facebook, on the other hand allows me to keep up with my nieces and nephews, all of which have facebook accounts.
Interestingly, my sons do not. Maybe because we moved to the Owen's Gorge when they were 7 & 10 and the only TV was ABC Reno and that was not reliable. They prefer the phone to e-mail.
Blogging on the other hand, has made me think and gives a creative outlet. I find myself waking in the middle of the night thinking of another blog essay I want to write.
I thank one of my nieces for that as she too uses Facebook much less than her blog. She researches articles for her Sabin Canyon blog and goes out and takes the pictures to go with it.