http://www.socialtwister.com/2007/01/04/continuous-partial-postponement/ Confessions of a Social Tools Architect Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:13:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.3 http://www.socialtwister.com/2007/01/04/continuous-partial-postponement/#comment-31639 Mon, 08 Jan 2007 16:06:39 +0000 http://www.socialtwister.com/2007/01/04/continuous-partial-postponement/#comment-31639 [...] followed a couple links today from an email to a post (which was also worth reading, about the difference between multi-tasking and ‘continuous partial attention’) to this fascinating post about teenagers and their tendancy to shed online personalities and start over. January 01, 2007 ephemeral profiles (cuz losing passwords is common amongst teens) Sara created a MySpace using an email address that she made specifically for that purpose. After vacation, she couldn’t remember her MySpace password (or her email password). She created a new MySpace page using a new throwaway email address. When i asked her if she was irritated that she had to do this after investing time in the previous profile, she said, “nah.. I had too many Friends that I didn’t know anyways.” This snippet from my fieldnotes depicts an attitude that i keep hearing from teens that completely contradicts adult norms. Many teens are content (if not happy) to start over with most of their accounts in most places. Forgot your IM password? Sign up again. Forgot your email address? Create a new one. Forgot your login? Time for a change. [...] […] followed a couple links today from an email to a post (which was also worth reading, about the difference between multi-tasking and ‘continuous partial attention’) to this fascinating post about teenagers and their tendancy to shed online personalities and start over. January 01, 2007 ephemeral profiles (cuz losing passwords is common amongst teens) Sara created a MySpace using an email address that she made specifically for that purpose. After vacation, she couldn’t remember her MySpace password (or her email password). She created a new MySpace page using a new throwaway email address. When i asked her if she was irritated that she had to do this after investing time in the previous profile, she said, “nah.. I had too many Friends that I didn’t know anyways.” This snippet from my fieldnotes depicts an attitude that i keep hearing from teens that completely contradicts adult norms. Many teens are content (if not happy) to start over with most of their accounts in most places. Forgot your IM password? Sign up again. Forgot your email address? Create a new one. Forgot your login? Time for a change. […]

]]> http://www.socialtwister.com/2007/01/04/continuous-partial-postponement/#comment-30821 Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:51:45 +0000 http://www.socialtwister.com/2007/01/04/continuous-partial-postponement/#comment-30821 [...] Our good friend Greg(arious) Narain has written a great little piece on the idea of “Continuous Partial Postponement” that he gleaned from a book he is reading called Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck. He relates it to being the pessimistic view of looking at Linda Stone’s ideas around “Continuous Partial ATTENTION“. From my perspective it is simply another way of correlating to the brain as computer metaphor - we have to share/split the functions of the whole brain in order to interact with the ever quickening pace of life today - but that does not mean we lose the ability to be fully present in any given moment, just that we choose to operate differently for our own unique personal objectives.  Asking questions as to whether or not this is good or bad for us is the right thing to do, but I am not inclined to judge it as either good or bad - though like similar activities and experiences, it is best done in moderation. It is though, more of an effect of the global network connectivity enabled by technology rather than the technology itslef - but would of course not be possible without the technology. I make this additional distinction because we get to choose how we use our tools - or at least those of us who can make a conscious choice do. While the system demands us to be ever more hyper nodes of the network, scanning, processing, determining and taking action, we don’t need to feed it - most people don’t and won’t. However, in the knowledge economy that we live within today, those who have the talent and skills should be rewarded richly if they find their passion and joy in such activities. Only so much of it can really be taught, this contextualiation capability is an evolutionary and genetic trait. [...] […] Our good friend Greg(arious) Narain has written a great little piece on the idea of “Continuous Partial Postponement” that he gleaned from a book he is reading called Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck. He relates it to being the pessimistic view of looking at Linda Stone’s ideas around “Continuous Partial ATTENTION“. From my perspective it is simply another way of correlating to the brain as computer metaphor - we have to share/split the functions of the whole brain in order to interact with the ever quickening pace of life today - but that does not mean we lose the ability to be fully present in any given moment, just that we choose to operate differently for our own unique personal objectives.  Asking questions as to whether or not this is good or bad for us is the right thing to do, but I am not inclined to judge it as either good or bad - though like similar activities and experiences, it is best done in moderation. It is though, more of an effect of the global network connectivity enabled by technology rather than the technology itslef - but would of course not be possible without the technology. I make this additional distinction because we get to choose how we use our tools - or at least those of us who can make a conscious choice do. While the system demands us to be ever more hyper nodes of the network, scanning, processing, determining and taking action, we don’t need to feed it - most people don’t and won’t. However, in the knowledge economy that we live within today, those who have the talent and skills should be rewarded richly if they find their passion and joy in such activities. Only so much of it can really be taught, this contextualiation capability is an evolutionary and genetic trait. […]

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