Wednesday, August 11, 2010

I know a little bit about a lot of things . . . .

It started with a John Updike short story.  John is a very famous American writer who died last year.  He wrote many things for the New Yorker magazine - one category being short stories.
I was thinking of him today, and went to the New Yorker web site.  I came upon an audio file of a  reader doing one of Updike's short stories.  The download said it would take 32 minutes.  I suppose 32 minutes could be considered short by many of us - but perhaps long as well.
The story sounded good - a lot of rather long words not usually heard in ordinary conversation - which kind of surprised me.  But, this is John Updike - right?  I mean, he's revered.  He's done many many kinds of writing - all of them to rave reviews.  So what do I know.
After a few minutes, I got an idea for this blog - and left the audio just like that!  It didn't hold me at all!
Another illustration.  A web site I like - "Speaking of Faith" - about all kinds of faith passions that people have, some of them spiritual, all of them deep.  The moderator of the web site is a fascinating and very clever lady.  She writes a short 'overview' of her guest, their subject matter and what the message is.  The rest of the links to this guest's appearance on the web site are quite long inserts and require good attention.
I never seem to be able to read or listen to these longer items.  I used to be able to.  And I think I can still do this, but I have to be in the right mood or situation.
I've read various things lately that internet browsing, Facebook, Twitter - Blogs - all of them being "short" kinds of items  -   this kind of contemplation has slowly cut down the time we seem to be able to concentrate on a topic.  We waver, we go wobbly, we skip over to check e-mail, thinking we'll return to the article, but we don't.
I have always said that I want to "know a little bit about a lot of things" but not a lot about them.  And that's true.  But does that make me a perfect candidate for the attention span problem?  Or does anybody fall into it?
I think it's a little bit of both.  Long before the internet, I was a "magazine" reader - a newspaper reader - never read a lot of books, or read them half way and quit.  So when I became fascinated by the computer, I was the ideal candidate for it.  Skipping here there and everywhere suited me very well.
But I think there is some merit in the theory - that computers have "shortened" our attention span - that we've become "twittered" and "facebooked" and "blogged" into needing more and more "headlines" and less and less of what comes after.
What do you think?