[iDC] partial vs. peripheral attention

[Brian Holmes]

john sobol wrote:

> What matters is that there is a generation of kids out there for whom 
> reading long texts is weird, for whom writing long texts is weird, for 
> whom literate-style one-way communication that eliminates peripheral 
> streams is downright freaky. 

Yeah, and there's a generation of kids out there who can be very easily 
manipulated, who have not come up with any significant cultural 
resistance to the gradual decline of their societies into fascism! A 
generation of kids who haven't managed to create any politically 
powerful musical resistance either!

Improvising is great, I think in several directions at once, let my mind 
float, watch while I listen and sing while I walk. But the whole thing 
of trying to promote this human capacity of improvising and dialoguing 
in the moment against another one, reading and writing with a little 
time for reflection and self-criticism, is imho just foolish, 
especially on the basis of an argument that "the kids do it," which in 
case you haven't noticed is the great argument of PR people and venture 
capitalists looking for a new easy buck. The world isn't run by the 
kids, and neither is the media system. The machines we use, and that use 
us, that channel our attention into particular patterns, were not 
invented and were not produced by means of peripheral attention. This is 
not an argument against improvising or free associating or dialoguing 
spontaneously. But it is an argument against promoting those capacities 
above all others. I really find it childish in the worst sense of the 
word, sorry. If everyone goes on saying oh yeah, sure, to such 
arguments, in the end we'll live in the paradise of the totally 
manipulable population, and the few who do reflect on what they are 
doing will control the many, even more easily than they do now. Which 
doesn't mean stop playing music!

Happy New Year, Brian