When Exactly Did Focus Become A Rare Artifact?

I've written a couple of times previously about Continuous Distraction Mode (CDM), which is my term for the current phenomenon which seems to have rendered most people incapable of applying their undivided attention to just one thing at a time. In reading over the 2 new chapters in the 3.0 version of Thomas L Friedman's The World is Flat, I see that another name for it preceded mine: continuous partial attention. I actually heard that from a friend a few months ago, but couldn't remember the exact wording, which is why I made up my own. Regardless of what we call it, though, the effects are indisputable and getting worse all the time.

When I was still working, there was pressure being applied to have all managers and above carry a BlackBerry. I made it clear that I had no intention of doing so and was prepared to "go to the mat" (no pun intended) in defense of my position. Before it could come to a head, though, I resigned over other inane decisions that were being made (see the last several chapters of More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan for the excruciating details) which made the matter moot. Everyone at that level within the organization carries a BlackBerry now, I believe.

I've never owned a cellphone, either, although Vicki does (she seldom turns it on, however, except when she's expecting a call from me). It's just never seemed like a good idea, to me, to always be reachable. Yes, I know the mantra: "What if someone needed to get ahold of you, on a life or death matter?" Well, if even 0.01% of the calls cellphone owners engage in have anything to do with matters of any urgency, then they do an amazing job of covering it up by pretending to have conversations that at least appear to be completely inane and pathetic. That, and the fact that I've never needed to be reached for a life-or-death crisis in 46 years of living (so far), makes me doubt the veracity of that argument, at least.

While I was working, the products that we supported were within the entertainment industry, meaning that no lives - not even one! - were on the line because of our software. And yet, judging by the frantic need to have immediate responses to every little crisis that came along, you'd have thought that we were the geniuses responsible for keeping the nation's planes in the air or protecting our borders from marauding terrorists. In other words, somebody had completely lost perspective. A decision was made at some level that all of the people in the pyramid above the ground floor should be "on call", 24/7. In one way, I think that fed some egos and made people feel more important than they ever should have. But it also took its toll in the arena of focus, as I saw on a daily basis.

Too many meetings were attended by people tapping away on their laptops and not paying attention to what was being discussed. Too many conversations were interrupted by a buzzing BlackBerry, quickly un-holstered in one gunslinger-like motion, signaling the abrupt end of yet another attempt at communication. It was getting laughably bad when I left, and I suspect it's continued in that same direction in the nearly year and a half that I've been out of the place. There, as with most workplaces, focus is valued considerably less than "an ability to react."

In my Math tutoring travels, I can already see the impact that this unfortunate cultural shift is having on the next generation. Their thoughts flit all over the place, and most of them are only ever really engaged if you flash bright lights in front of them in the form of some sort of entertainment (TV, movies, video games). Against that backdrop, it's awfully hard to imagine very many of them growing up to have the creativity, discipline and insight that has made so much progress possible over the past century. Maybe we've actually peaked in that regard already, and this is just what it looks like as you travel back down the other side of the hill?