Presented in the first Media One lecture from the other day, this article written by N. Katherine Hayles, compares and contrasts the two cognitive modes mentioned in the title. While both are necessary in life for a wide range of applications in their own right, whether its academic achievement, business or even basic survival, in this day and age there does seem to be a strong swing toward hyper attention in day to day life. This shift from one mode to the other as outlined within the text does seem to be both effecting and effected by media.

Even within my lifetime I’ve been caught up in this shift. For example as my parents always encouraged me to read, as a younger kid  I would spend my time before bed reading Harry Potter and Eragon and such. Nowadays I’ll be watching bmx or car vlogs on youtube (skipping through them too) while messaging multiple people and checking snap stories for example but you already knew that because you’re surely doing the same thing. Whether this is a positive thing or not I couldn’t tell you. Last year in year 12, deep attention was required in a big way to get through subjects such as Classics and Philosophy for me whereas in my media class (surprise!) the year before, hyper attention proved more useful as you could get a bunch of different tasks done simultaneously.

Funnily enough, deep attention and daydreaming are akin to each other I believe as both involve a single mindedness and little to no distraction from outside stimuli. I’m a veteran space cadet myself and spend a lot of time zoned out (with or without music) or lost in my imagination even more than I was as a child. It’s a nice escape from the saturated world we find ourselves in and maybe this is even a way for myself to keep a better balance between the two types of attention.

Surely like most things in life, the key is balance no matter which way our generation seems to be skewed.