The Story Vs. Continuous Partial Attention

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gu0iu0xwls[/youtube]

I conversation over email sparked my drive to write this entry. Fragmented, debased, partial, immediate, indulgent. These are words that shape the era. Not a particular demographic. If you’re connected to the internet, these types of words come with it. They are habits of consumption that lead to habits of expectation. And if expectations are disappointed, the message is lost, all effort is muted. Sobering.

Nothing hurts worse than having a kid-like eagerness to whip out my laptop, show my latest video piece to a friend, and watch them react to all my edits – to the story I’ve chosen to weave together – and then right in the middle of watching it, they answer their cell phone, or start talking to someone who walks in the room. They miss 10 entire seconds! (which took 10 hours to edit!). I hide my upset feelings, kindly hit rewind, and resume. Or if someone asks me a question during the video, I simply don’t answer, hoping that my non-responsiveness will signal to them to “hold questions until the end please.”

I think everyone who slaves for hours in the edit bay wants the gratification of knowing that their hard work counts. That people will actually pay attention. Every producer wants their work presented in as close to a theater-like environment. Nothing to distract. Not even cell phones. Turn em off. I wish that type of experience was preserved onto multiple devices, whether mobile phone or laptop. Things are moving towards the living room, which is encouraging.

So the posted item above is a little ironic. They’re playing video games. I don’t think there’s a more numbing expression of the mind’s wasting away in a conscious nightmare (“you want bullets?”). But then I say to myself, “I wish my video stories could get that much attention.” What I can do outside of crafting a story to help get people’s attention?

Finding this answer has driven me to learn code, develop and present websites, make things Flash-y. The assumption being that it’s the delivery that counts. Whatever it takes to win this war on — story, right?
Thomas Friedman is one of my must-reads. I still remember his words from Nov 2006 , how they resonated then, and now, and keep me driving to solve this storytelling dilemma:

Yes, technology can make the far feel near. But it can also make the near feel very far…When I shared this story with Linda Stone, the technologist who once labeled the disease of the Internet age “continuous partial attention” — two people doing six things, devoting only partial attention to each one — she remarked: “We’re so accessible, we’re inaccessible. We can’t find the off switch on our devices or on ourselves. … We want to wear an iPod as much to listen to our own playlists as to block out the rest of the world and protect ourselves from all that noise. We are everywhere — except where we actually are physically.”

Maybe I should do a story about the thread on story. But then how would I deliver it?