141–150 of 495 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bought a projector and a popcorn machine, haven't been to the movies since.
I have those and it doesn't compete with IMAX and cinema sound, so I still go to the movies.
I feel like my own attention span has declined quite a bit, but I notice that younger people (including my kids) turn to Youtube for education - I've _never_ had an attention span that would allow me to sit through, say, a video programming tutorial (dear God, give me a book), but it seems to be the preferred approach for the next generation.
Trying to read classic literature really makes this apparent. Hemingway's Sun Also Rises must have been a riveting adventure story when it was published in 1926, but how can it compete with 10,000 hours of adventure travel on youtube, netflix etc.? Same with Moby Dick in 1850s... these were glimpses into exotic lives rarely heard of back then, but today you can find those stories or similar in vivid moving pictures a…
The average person in 1926 didn't and wouldn't read Hemingway either. The first print run of Sun Also Rises was 5000 copies. Most people didn't read much and a significant proportion couldn't read at all, and I suspect most of the silent movies of the time would seem quite trivial compared with much amateur YouTube content today I suspect that in 100 years time, bestselling books particularly popular with today's tec…
> Still, the book sold well, and young women began to emulate Brett while male students at Ivy League universities wanted to become "Hemingway heroes." Scribner's encouraged the publicity and allowed Hemingway to "become a minor American phenomenon"—a celebrity to the point that his divorce from Richardson and marriage to Pfeiffer attracted media attention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Also_Rises#Reception
There's just no way a similar book written today could have this impact.
I went to a theater to watch Mission: Impossible last night. It has a really long runtime (2h 48m) and, toward the end of the film, I started seeing multiple people pull out their phones for a time check; I had to stop myself from doing the same.
People hack themselves to find the quickest release of feel-good chemicals in their brain but most do it at the expense of not realizing that it numbs their entire existence. And now it’s more prevalent than it ever has been. Grabbing a phone is a nice way to stay in the shell that you have built around yourself and pretend like you have control over your life, but no one has control over their lives. The more you bu…
Many people's lives are not that good, there are many people with bad jobs they hate, or partners they can't stand. It's easy to imagine why humans act this way. What makes you think your life is so much better?
And if you’re wondering why it’s hard, it’s because those experiences define who you are. Do you think I chose them because I thought it would be fun? Nah, those are the things I had to experience and learn from.
Most people don’t want to learn from their mistakes because it means you have to give up a lot all at once. How are you going to be a decent human being if you can’t give up the old to let it the new? Your plan is to spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for yourself?
That is quite pathetic.
It's not enough to just base this on screens. It's also workplace environments. Even something as "simple" as working in a pizza place, say Domino's, is increasingly a frantic assembly line where orders can come at a breakneck pace through internet applications. You'll still be working somewhere perpetually understaffed and who give you basically no training, but expect you to pay attention to multiple threads at onc…
It's not enough to just base this on screens. It's also workplace environments. Even something as "simple" as working in a pizza place, say Domino's, is increasingly a frantic assembly line where orders can come at a breakneck pace through internet applications. You'll still be working somewhere perpetually understaffed and who give you basically no training, but expect you to pay attention to multiple threads at onc…
For an attention deficit programmer maybe this is a bonus. Not for me. I like to focus in on the task, take notes, figure it out, and get it out the door and off my plate. I don't like to nibble on code.
(Relative to humans that is :)
https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/
BUT:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shanesnow/2023/01/16/science-sh...