Monday, January 25, 2010

Mind Your Attention Span

They say that these days attention spans are shrinking, that people are becoming less patient.  They say that these days when people read, they do it for information, and the quicker the better. They say that the shorter the text, the more likely it is to be read.

That suits me fine.  It means that these entries will only be half as long as I imagined.  But there’s a problem with that.  Complex issues demand complex solutions - things aren’t always simple.  While it’s a mistake to needlessly complicate things, it’s just as bad to go for the lowest common denominator.  Besides, I can't really gloat about writing in brevity. As Pascal famously (supposedly) said "I would have written you a shorter letter but I ran out of time."

The simpler and easier a solution, the more popular it is.  That’s obvious.  But simple and easy does is not always the best.  We do live in a world that wants its fixes quickly, easily and “effectively”.  We live in a world which says that to keep things simple is to make them better.  We live in world that says “good things take time” but in which we seldom take the time to do good things.

No comments:

Post a Comment