Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (review)

Recently I had the opportunity to enjoy a screening of Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura. The print was pristine and the theater a marvel of comfort. The film is a bit of a slog, though, long and lugubrious, despite the “la dolce vita” vibes and the stunning vistas of Sicily. But I was struck at how the audience watched in rapt silence, save for the Italian granny behind me who kept grousing that she was once much more beautiful than “this” Monica Vitti. When the lights came up, I realized why the audience had been so attentive. Almost everyone in the hall was over forty.

Some feminist linguists have suggested that men and women should be considered different species when it comes to language. Perhaps the same can be said for those who were born before the internet and the cell phone and those who came after. Perhaps the real Y2K virus is only now apparent— a generation of peevish, tubby humanoids distracted from the rigors and rewards of an engaged existence by glorified Tamaguchis.

In her new book, Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson has seen the future. And it’s in the past. She suggests that, contrary to popular belief, the original Dark Ages were technologically advanced. They also were spiritually bleak.

The late, great George Carlin quipped that people have been “bought off” with gadgets and gizmos. As a zombie public taps away with rote ferocity on Black Berries, iPhones, and Xboxes, the powerful and the greedy indulge in whatever skullduggery they fancy—wars, corruption, pollution, prostitution, torture, wiretapping, etc. While America fidgets, Rome burns. Moreover, Jackson contends, because people can’t or won’t focus on anything for very long, they are unable to properly reflect on the vagaries, complexities, and caprices of life, essential to the forming of conscience, empathy, and a sense of social justice.

Early in the book Jackson makes a pilgrimage to see Thomas Lynch, the famous mortician-poet. Lynch, wry as ever, muses that death isn’t what it used to be. One man’s funeral involved a display of his ashes and his golf clubs, as if he might nip back at any moment for a quick nine holes before a three-martini lunch. Jackson would have been wise to take Lynch’s cue and run toward an in-depth philosophical discussion about how communication technology and the attendant rise of wired life has created a powerful engine for death denial. The toys are always on, always beeping, buzzing, and chirping. On the web, information and personalities are always circulating, floating, waiting. But never exiting for good.

One loses count of the ways in which American life is both pathetic and tragic but none is more heartbreaking than the simulation game Second Life. In an online gaming universe, people can now manicure and massage a “perfect” life on the web while their life off-line becomes a shadow existence, best forgotten for its hard choices and harder knocks. Following on the work of John Durham Peters (Speaking into the Air, 1999), Jackson rightfully points out that, while communication technology has never been more advanced, Americans’ ability to connect on a meaningful level with one another has never been more provisional or problematic. People long for deep human connection but seem unable to make it happen, no matter how fast they type or how many blogs they read.

Which is worse: cultural dross born of and made for flickering minds, or the cargo cult for delivery systems of said rubbish? Acolytes of a wired world will ask: Who cares if you’re downloading hardcore porn, just as long as you’re doing it on an iPod G3? That’s progress, baby, the cutting edge. Jackson is suitably suspicious. She’s not much enamored of capitalism either. Advertising, in particular, is highly adept at exploiting wireless technology to maximize distraction and minimize critical thought. The global economy is more and more...