ShareThisIf you can stay focused, my topic today is the various assaults on America's declining powers of concentration. Where was I? Oh yes, according to my theory, everything in modern life is subversive of people's ability to focus on the subject at hand. This is a huge problem.
With its relentless onslaught of diversions, we live in the United States of Now. And who among us has the mental powers to keep anything straight while information constantly streams in now? Here in America, it's go, go, go and stop, stop, stop. Just the facts, ma'am. Can you hold? I have a call on another line. You know the score? This just in. My cell phone's ringing. Here's a new score. You have e-mail. Text me now. Tweet, Tweet.
That last is not a canary loose in the sentence -- that would be another diversion and I am trying to hold your interest here -- it is a reference to Twitter, the new curse upon us.
As if TV commercials did not break our concentration at every turn, as if we do not have to watch 60 minutes of football in three hours, as if e-mail has not become a tyrant, as if cell phones haven't become security blankets, as if young people aren't furiously exercising their thumbs on Blackberrys, as if these young people will not develop such outsize thumbs that the human race will come to resemble lobsters in a few generations, as if some dogs don't now have blogs that are more popular than my blog, despite all of this, now there is Twitter.
Sorry for that last paragraph. It was a test. If you are still with me, there is hope for the world.
Where was I? Concerning the decline to our national powers of concentration, Twitter piles immediacy on top of immediacy with its "Tweets" -- the short messages of no more than 140 characters that are its hallmark. But what is Twitter? According to its own Web site, "Twitter is a service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" Actually, I am doing nothing exciting. I am writing this column. Sometimes I scratch my nose. Other times I take a stroll and look out the window at that little patch of blue that imprisoned editorial writers call the sky.
I do not want to be disturbed at the moment and I feel no need to be hyper-connected to my friends. Chances are that they are not doing anything exciting either. They are my friends, after all, and we were attracted by our mutual regard for dullness. I certainly can't imagine Tweeting them to find out what excitement they are likely not to be having.
I gather that this attitude makes me some sort of freak. A recent New York Times story described how various TV anchors and personalities Tweet their fans constantly with vapid if mercifully brief observations. Me, me, Tweet, Tweet.
To my mind, this is the self-absorbed and distracted society that gave us Helicopter Parents who can't leave their kids alone morphing into Helicopter Friends who can't leave their pals alone. If you ask me, these Tweets are about as desirable as toots.
The English poet William Wordsworth once wrote: "The world is too much with us; late and soon, /Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours ..." And Wordsworth didn't even have an iPhone! Ah well, it's a free country. People can be twits. They can be distracted as they like and, in their happily unfocused state, they can latch on to political propaganda so that they won't have to concentrate on thinking things through beyond the limit of 140 characters. Their friends have to be Tweeted, after all.
But I can't help thinking that this seemingly benign amusement is the symptom of a bigger, more fundamental problem. Our national motto is fast becoming: "Attention Deficit Disorder -- It's Not Just for Kids Anymore." Everything in the culture is now designed to cultivate minds like butterflies that flit from one subject to another and always alight softly.
I am not even sure there's a remedy, short of adding Ritalin to the water supply along with fluoride so that people will be able to concentrate enough to smile and show their nice teeth. I suppose we could also recruit old-school nuns to visit malls and rap the knuckles of teenagers who are not paying attention.
Where was I? Oh yes, this is how the world ends -- not with a bang but a Twitter.
(Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. E-mail rhenry(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
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Does Tweeting make you a Twit?
Reg, I'm worried about you. You sound, ah, just a tad curmudgeony. Are you getting outside enough -- how's the old vitamin D levels? Are there no small birds at all, winging their way through your one little patch of blue -- no tiny peeps of social-spring that are penetrating the glass?
I started out a bit like you, that is, of the opinion that Social Networking sites, Twitter included, were self-involved twaddle magnets, placed on the earth to suck in all the narcissistic nabobs into a conveniently contained cyberworld package where they could yammer on about themselves to each other, ad nauseum, leaving the rest of us free to experience our full, satisfying, and reasonably solitary lives without their irritating twirping. Full lives kind of like yours, where gazing out the window, scratching your nose, and looking up Wordsworth in your, (probably sitting right there on the desktop), big fat Oxford English Dictionary, are really all you need. That and an occasional outing with one of your men-friends where you murmur happily into your own beers, communing in a dull-guy kind of way that is almost as good as being alone.
Hey, I used to be the gal version of this so I have some glimmer of where you are coming from. I used to be that way, then fate intervened. My sister talked me into trying a Twitter account one day to stay in touch with family and connect with other writers. So, I jumped up off the,‘Tweet-no-way!’ boat.
I’m two months in the water and I’m surprised -- surprised by the level of intelligence, humor, information and generosity I found when I started to post, and surprised at how much I enjoy being connected to people and events all over the world. I get great restaurant advice and local NYC news from @queenie_nyc, spot-on book biz information from Lit-angent @ColleenLindsay. @mattigee liked my Renoir backdrop and shared some family history with me (Renoir was his great-uncle) and also put me onto the best martini happy hour in Paris. There’s a plethora of creative, interesting, helpful and generous folks out there and I’m having a blast.
Is Twitter my whole life -- Nah. My life is sitting here writing this to you while watching my cat play ‘dead’ upside down on the deck in his perennial hope a particularly dumb bird might someday land on him, then fielding tax questions from my spouse -- who knew Manicures are not tax deductible. I use my fingers for work!
Twitter is not my whole life but the part it plays in my life is real. It’s kinda funny that I found your column not by googling Twitter but on a ‘Wordsworth’ Search. I’m crazy about that guy and Tweet-quote him each night before going to bed. I think that what it all comes down to is this: only the love is real. He says it better than I can:
THE EXCURSION
BOOK FOURTH
DESPONDENCY CORRECTED
"Happy is he who lives to understand,
Not human nature only, but explores
All natures,--to the end that he may find
The law that governs each; and there begins
The union, the partition where, that makes
Kind and degree, among all visible Beings;
The constitutions, powers, and faculties,
Which they inherit,--cannot step beyond,--
And cannot fall beneath; that do assign
To every class its station and its office,
Through all the mighty commonwealth of things
Up from the creeping plant to sovereign Man.
Such converse, if directed by a meek,
Sincere, and humble spirit, teaches love:
For knowledge is delight; and such delight
Breeds love: yet, suited as it rather is
To thought and to the climbing intellect,
It teaches less to love, than to adore;
If that be not indeed the highest love!"
PS: Why not give twitter a try. You could lurk as @littlepatchofblue and I’d be your first follower. I bet you do fascinating things with paper clips between window breaks and have many writing tips par excellence to share.....probably a few tips in the happy hour department as well. You could always use a dog picture to up the “popularity quotient.”!
Come on, I double dare you, jump in....the water fine.
I would be your second
I would be your second connection! :)
Actually, chances are I wouldn't, because there are probably a lot of people on there you know -- and people you'd like to know, as well. Not to mention a lot of people you'd never have gotten to meet any other way.
I bet Wordsworth would be on twitter, if he was still alive; a word can be worth quite a lot, on there. ;)