Continuous Partial Attention and attention.xml

Submitted by GregoryHeller on January 9, 2006 - 10:44am.

This morning as I ran my errands I listened to Your Attention Please, the full panel discussion from which some content in the Distributing the Future podcast I blogged about last week came from.

The whole panel discussion is about an hour long and includes Steve Gillmor, Glenn Reid, Doreé Duncan Seligmann, David Sifry and Linda Stone.

I highly recommend it. Linda Stone's concept of "continuous partial attention" is very interesting and I plan on reading up more on the concept on Corante and Joi Ito's blog and on O'Reilly.

I am employing continuous partial attention right now. I created this entry while we were on our morning scrum! And I listened to the discussion while running errands (going to the bank, getting a coffee, at the post office, walking around...)

Oh, in terms of attention.xml, this is something the David Sifry was talking about, and I have been reading a bit about attention trust and talking to to Kaliya Hamlin about this stuff too.

Som thoughts on CPA
Submitted by GregoryHeller on January 9, 2006 - 11:20am.

So one of the big things about this concept of continuous partial attention is the idea that week feel better the more connected that we are. That if we devote ourselves fully to one activity, we are missing other opportunities.

Have we entered a new phase of life where CPA has to be the norm? where the work day is just a constant stream of interruptions? Or is there a way to maintain connections, not miss opportunities, and devote our full attention to tasks?

Linda Stone calls Attention Deficit Disorder a "dysfunctional variant of continuous partial attention". Can someone develop ADD from unchecked CPA?

Text of Linda Stone's Talk
Submitted by GregoryHeller on January 11, 2006 - 7:59am.

Podcasts are greta and all, but not nearly as easy to navigate as the text of the talk. These are good (nearly verbatim) notes of the talk.

a few great lines:

Another consequence of email culture is that we don't make decisions: send emails around.


The next aphrodisiac is committed full-attention focus. In this new area, experiencing this engaged attention is to feel alive. Trusted filters, trusted protectors, trusted concierge, human or technical, removing distractions and managing boundaries, filtering signal from noise, enabling meaningful connections, that make us feel secure, are the opportunity for the next generation. Opportunity will be the tools and technologies to take our power back.