Infinite Distraction

Author : Dominic Pettman
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509502300
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Infinite Distraction written by Dominic Pettman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often argued that contemporary media homogenize our thoughts and actions, without us being fully aware of the restrictions they impose. But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity. In this short and provocative book, Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls 'hypermodulation,' as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily clicking ourselves to death. This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.

Author : Dominic Pettman
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509502289
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Infinite Distraction written by Dominic Pettman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-05-27 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often argued that contemporary media homogenize our thoughts and actions, without us being fully aware of the restrictions they impose. But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity. In this short and provocative book, Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls hypermodulation, as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily clicking ourselves to death. This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.

Author : Natalie M. Phillips
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421420139
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Distraction written by Natalie M. Phillips and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightenment writers fiercely debated the nature of distraction in literature. Early novel reading typically conjures images of rapt readers in quiet rooms, but commentators at the time described reading as a fraught activity, one occurring amidst a distracting cacophony that included sloshing chamber pots and wailing street vendors. Auditory distractions were compounded by literary ones as falling paper costs led to an explosion of print material, forcing prose fiction to compete with a dizzying array of essays, poems, sermons, and histories. In Distraction, Natalie M. Phillips argues that prominent Enlightenment authors—from Jane Austen and William Godwin to Eliza Haywood and Samuel Johnson—were deeply engaged with debates about the wandering mind, even if they were not equally concerned about the problem of distractibility. Phillips explains that some novelists in the 1700s—viewing distraction as a dangerous wandering from singular attention that could lead to sin or even madness—attempted to reform diverted readers. Johnson and Haywood, for example, worried that contemporary readers would only focus long enough to “look into the first pages” of essays and novels; Austen offered wry commentary on the issue through the creation of the daft Lydia Bennet, a character with an attention span so short she could listen only “half-a-minute.” Other authors radically redefined distraction as an excellent quality of mind, aligning the multiplicity of divided focus with the spontaneous creation of new thought. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, for example, won audiences with its comically distracted narrator and uniquely digressive form. Using cognitive science as a framework to explore the intertwined history of mental states, philosophy, science, and literary forms, Phillips explains how arguments about the diverted mind made their way into the century’s most celebrated literature. She also draws a direct link between the disparate theories of focus articulated in eighteenth-century literature and modern experiments in neuroscience, revealing that contemporary questions surrounding short attention spans are grounded in long conversations over the nature and limits of focus.

Author : Alessandra Aloisi
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350342963
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Power of Distraction written by Alessandra Aloisi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-07 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pascal to contemporary anxieties about attention, we have constantly been urged to avoid distraction if we want to live and work better. But Alessandra Aloisi argues that we are missing the point.Drawing on a broad range ofEuropean philosophy and literature, this book considers distraction not as an expression of human imperfection, but as a creative, subversive, and aesthetic capability. In contrast to the traditional accounts, from Saint Augustine to Robert Burton, which either associated distraction with sin or considered it as a symptom of melancholy, Aloisi argues that it is often precisely when we stop thinking about something that inspiration finds us. Why else are artists described as having their heads in the clouds? This book demonstrates the serendipity of distraction through close readings of cultural and visual sources ranging from the mathematician Poincaré to the Netflix show, Black Mirror. With inspiration from La Bruyère, Rousseau, Leopardi, Stendhal, Baudelaire, and others, Aloisi further examines the political value of distraction. After all, in an age of ubiquitous technology and 24/7 availability fighting for our attention, distraction provides what Bergson called a 'slight revolt' from the codes and behaviors that society dictates. Combining philosophy, literature, art, and politics, The Power of Distraction encourages us to think differently about our attention and considers just how productive daydreams can be.

Author : Jake Knapp
Publisher : Crown Currency
ISBN 13 : 0525572430
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Make Time written by Jake Knapp and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint comes “a unique and engaging read about a proven habit framework [that] readers can apply to each day” (Insider, Best Books to Form New Habits). “If you want to achieve more (without going nuts), read this book.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why? In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That's what this book is about. As creators of Google Ventures' renowned "design sprint," Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they've packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles. Make Time isn't about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn't about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it's about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction. A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day..., Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.

Author : Karl A. Plank
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000338967
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Fact of the Cage written by Karl A. Plank and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest raised expectations of what a novel might do. As he understood fiction to aim at what it means to be human, so he hoped his work might relieve the loneliness of human suffering. In that light, The Fact of the Cage shows how Wallace’s masterpiece dramatizes the condition of encagement and how it comes to be met by "Abiding" and through inter-relational acts of speaking and hearing, touching, and facing. Revealing Wallace’s theology of a "boneless Christ," The Fact of the Cage wagers that reading such a novel as Infinite Jest makes available to readers the redemption glimpsed in its pages, that reading fiction has ethical and religious significance—in short, that reading Infinite Jest makes one better. As such, Plank’s work takes steps to defend the ethics of fiction, the vital relation between religion and literature, and why one just might read at all.

Author : Margaret Stohl
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1984812033
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Jo & Laurie written by Margaret Stohl and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling authors Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz bring us a romantic retelling of Little Women starring Jo March and her best friend, the boy next door, Theodore "Laurie" Laurence—now available in paperback! 1869, Concord, Massachusetts: After the publication of her first novel, Jo March is shocked to discover her book of scribbles has become a bestseller, and her publisher and fans demand a sequel. While pressured into coming up with a story, she goes to New York with her dear friend Laurie for a week of inspiration—museums, operas, and even a once-in-a-lifetime reading by Charles Dickens himself! But Laurie has romance on his mind, and despite her growing feelings, Jo's desire to remain independent leads her to turn down his heartfelt marriage proposal and sends the poor boy off to college heartbroken. When Laurie returns to Concord with a sophisticated new girlfriend, will Jo finally communicate her true heart's desire or lose the love of her life forever?

Author : Alice Bennett
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474282636
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Contemporary Fictions of Attention written by Alice Bennett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the supposed shortening of our attention spans, what future is there for fiction in the age of the internet? Contemporary Fictions of Attention rejects this discourse of distraction-crisis which suggests that the future of reading is in peril, and instead finds that contemporary writers construct 'fictions of attention' that find some value in states or moments of inattention. Through discussion of work by a diverse selection of writers, including Joshua Cohen, Ben Lerner, Tom McCarthy, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace, this book identifies how fiction prompts readers to become peripherally aware of their own attention. Contemporary Fictions of Attention locates a common interest in attention within 21st-century fiction and connects this interest to a series of debates surrounding ethics, temporality, the everyday, boredom, work, and self-discipline in contemporary culture.

Author : Jeffrey T. Nealon
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 149620865X
Total Pages : 143 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book I'm Not Like Everybody Else written by Jeffrey T. Nealon and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the presence of the Flaming Lips in a commercial for a copier and Iggy Pop’s music in luxury cruise advertisements, Jeffrey T. Nealon argues that popular music has not exactly been co-opted in the American capitalist present. Contemporary neoliberal capitalism has, in fact, found a central organizing use for the values of twentieth-century popular music: being authentic, being your own person, and being free. In short, not being like everybody else. Through a consideration of the shift in dominant modes of power in the American twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from what Michel Foucault calls a dominant “disciplinary” mode of power to a “biopolitical” mode, Nealon argues that the modes of musical “resistance” need to be completely rethought and that a commitment to musical authenticity or meaning—saying “no” to the mainstream—is no longer primarily where we might look for music to function against the grain. Rather, it is in the technological revolutions that allow biopolitical subjects to deploy music within an everyday set of practices (MP3 listening on smartphones and iPods, streaming and downloading on the internet, the background music that plays nearly everywhere) that one might find a kind of ambient or ubiquitous answer to the “attention capitalism” that has come to organize neoliberalism in the American present. In short, Nealon stages the final confrontation between “keepin’ it real” and “sellin’ out.”

Author : Kevin Snook
Publisher : Morgan James Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1683506715
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Make It Right written by Kevin Snook and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading a manufacturing business does not need to be so difficult! Manufacturing can be frustrating because of endless people challenges, equipment failures, schedule interruptions, and the looming threat of major quality issues. Labor costs rise, employee and customer expectations increase, manufacturing budgets are cut – and you’re required to deliver more with less. In this groundbreaking book, Kevin Snook reveals how the manufacturing leader can be instrumental in making it right. He shares simple but powerful practices for rapidly turning a manufacturing division around, distilling his 30 years of frontline experience with managing hundreds of the world’s best (and worst) manufacturing companies into a step-by-step alignment process that you can use to implement change that’s effective in days rather than years. Kevin has led companies around the world based on the methods of management legends like Peter F. Drucker, and has implemented lean, high-performance work systems. In the era of Industry 4.0, Kevin has built on those foundations to formulate a highly effective process for aligning your manufacturing organization to deliver sustainable growth. Thes message in Make It Right is clear: Leading a highly successful manufacturing company can be simple, enjoyable, and thoroughly rewarding – if you align the process from the frontline to the bottom line.