BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From the front of "Distracted":

"Attention is the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. If we squander our power of attention, our technological age could ultimately slip into cultural decline."

From Publishers Weekly:

In this richly detailed and passionately argued book, Jackson (What's Happening to Home?) warns that modern society's inability to focus heralds an impending Dark Age—an era historically characterized by the decline of a civilization amid abundance and technological advancement. Jackson posits that our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress and stunting society's ability to comprehend what's relevant and permanent. The author provides a lively historical survey of attention, drawing upon philosophy, the impact of scientific innovations and her own experiences to investigate the possible genetic and psychological roots of distraction. While Jackson cites modern virtual life (the social network Facebook and online interactive game Second Life), her research is largely mired in the previous century, and she draws weak parallels between romance via telegraph and online dating, and supernatural spiritualism and a newfound desire to reconnect. Despite the detours (a cultural history of the fork?), Jackson has produced a well-rounded and well-researched account of the travails facing an ADD society and how to reinvigorate a renaissance of attention.

Alan Lightman, author of the bestselling Einstein's Dreams and National Book Award finalist The Diagnosis and MIT professor:

"This is an important book. I found it to be a harrowing documentation of our modern world's descent into fragmentation, self alienation, and emptiness -- brought on, to a large extent, by communication technologies that distract us, dislocate us, and destroy our inner lives. Others have commented on these issues, but I have never seen them gathered together and documented as completely as Maggie Jackson has done."

About the Author:

Maggie Jackson (New York, NY) is an award-winning author and journalist who is a contributing columnist at The Boston Sunday Globe. A former foreign correspondent and national columnist for the Associated Press, she has been interviewed on National Public Radio and has contributed to the New York Times, Working Mother, and many other national publications. She is the author of What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age and has been interviewed in the Christian Science Monitor, on television, and on dozens of other radio shows.


From Publishers Weekly:

In this richly detailed and passionately argued book, Jackson (What's Happening to Home?) warns that modern society's inability to focus heralds an impending Dark Age—an era historically characterized by the decline of a civilization amid abundance and technological advancement. Jackson posits that our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress and stunting society's ability to comprehend what's relevant and permanent. The author provides a lively historical survey of attention, drawing upon philosophy, the impact of scientific innovations and her own experiences to investigate the possible genetic and psychological roots of distraction. While Jackson cites modern virtual life (the social network Facebook and online interactive game Second Life), her research is largely mired in the previous century, and she draws weak parallels between romance via telegraph and online dating, and supernatural spiritualism and a newfound desire to reconnect. Despite the detours (a cultural history of the fork?), Jackson has produced a well-rounded and well-researched account of the travails facing an ADD society and how to reinvigorate a renaissance of attention.

Alan Lightman, author of the bestselling Einstein's Dreams and National Book Award finalist The Diagnosis and MIT professor:

"This is an important book. I found it to be a harrowing documentation of our modern world's descent into fragmentation, self alienation, and emptiness -- brought on, to a large extent, by communication technologies that distract us, dislocate us, and destroy our inner lives. Others have commented on these issues, but I have never seen them gathered together and documented as completely as Maggie Jackson has done."

About the Author:

Maggie Jackson (New York, NY) is an award-winning author and journalist who is a contributing columnist at The Boston Sunday Globe. A former foreign correspondent and national columnist for the Associated Press, she has been interviewed on National Public Radio and has contributed to the New York Times, Working Mother, and many other national publications. She is the author of What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age and has been interviewed in the Christian Science Monitor, on television, and on dozens of other radio shows.

Book description from the publisher:

We have vast oceans of information at our disposal, yet increasingly we seek knowledge with brief glimpses at online headlines while juggling other tasks. We are networked as never before, but we communicate even with our most intimate friends and family via instant messaging, email, and fleeting face-to-face moments that are rescheduled a dozen times, then punctuated when they do occur with electronic interruptions and a lack of focus.

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something crucial is missing--attention. Attention is the key to recapturing our ability to reconnect, reflect, and relax; the secret to coping with a mobile, multitasking, virtual world that isn't going to slow down or get simpler. Attention can keep us grounded and focused--not diffused and fragmented.

Distracted offers the cutting-edge solutions we need to cure--not just live with--an epidemic of inattention. How did we get to the point where we keep one eye on our Blackberry and one eye on our spouse--in bed? At a time when we can contact millions of people worldwide, why is it hard to schedule a simple family supper? Most importantly, what can we do about it?

Journey with Maggie Jackson as she explores the many ways in which we are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained attention-the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its erosion, she introduces us to scientists, cartographers, marketers, educators, wired teens, virtual lovers from the telegraph age, and roboticists building smart machines to comfort and care for us. She takes us from the nineteenth-century roots of our mobile, virtual multitasking ways into a darkening future of snippets, glimpses, skimming, McThinking, and mistrust.

Jackson makes it clear that if we continue down this road of scattered attention spans and widespread societal ADD, we will be in danger of squandering and devaluing the essence of humanity, and our technological age could ultimately slip into cultural decline. But we are just as capable of igniting a renaissance of attention by strengthening our varied powers of focus and perception, the keys to judgment, memory, morality, and happiness. She investigates the science of attention--describing some of the exciting new scientific research that shows how attention skills can be nurtured.

Taking us beyond Blink, Faster, and CrazyBusy, Distraction is unique. It's simultaneously an original exposé of the multifaceted nature of attention, an engaging and often surprising portrait of postmodern life, and a compelling roadmap for cultivating sustained focus and nurturing a more enriched and literate society.



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