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Suleiman -> RE: Question:Attention Span (2/6/2005 1:59:00 PM)
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Hi Gloria.
Yes, I have indeed noticed this one. Being the incredibly verbose individual that I am, I find that there are a great many who can not effectively wend their way through my missives and actually retain the gist of what I had been saying. For the most part I try to take the occasional criticism in good grace (rather than muttering to myself about how actual literacy, not to mention manners, has gone down the toilet in the last thirty years).
For the most part, I simply consider this part of the screening process. It's another level of compatability, and a very important one, since it involves communication. Some people can not deal with large blocks of text, others can't stand short fragmentary sentences rife with shorthand phrasing and mangled grammar.
I have noticed that some people write long messages in a form that I have difficulty comprehending. This is especially true for those who have a unique understanding of the ellipse and how it is used in the english language. Long run-on sentences, a page-long block of text that should be broken up into multiple paragraphs but isn't, poor spelling, even a bad choice of font can make it difficult for me to read a message.
Short attention span is a growing problem in the US, and to a lesser extent abroad. I take the hysteria with a grain of salt, since the fear-mongers that work for CNN have made much to-do of the rise in ADD in the American population. I do believe that we have, as a society, begun to train children form an early age to take information in concentrated packets, increasing the amount of data but reducing the amount of time taken to communicate it. Unfortunately, this really tends to make us more isolated, since there are limits to the speed at which human beings are able to speak. Our inability to communicate with strangers leads us to seek interaction elsewhere, typically gaining an ersatz glow of community from the television, computer, or at this point by way of text messaging (which has gone on to increase the trend towards disassembling the language, due to the inconvenience of using a telephone number pad, combined with the expense of paying for bandwidth).
I don't know if this tendency has led to a greater number of newbies acting recklessly. Honestly, I don't think that it would. Newbies are reckless. I was reckless when I just entered the community, and so was almost everybody I know. The "auntie" who mentored me laughed at my mistakes and told me about similar bone-headed stunts she pulled off when she joined the community. Recklessness is just part of the game.
Honestly, aliteracy is also pretty normal. It is only in recent years that we have been in a situation where the majority of the population has been required to read. Most human beings really don't care about the written word, and the fact that those who have no interest in reading are required to do so any way, or else be cursed with the most menial of jobs for the rest of their lives, makes literacy an onus from which they desire only escape. That the aliterate have begun to become abliterate is not so surprising, at least to me, once that fact is taken into account.
Of course, what the aliterate are doing on the internet is beyond me. They should be outside, socializing, and being with other people. I used to dream about being able to access any library in the world. Instead I have to deal with a million pieces of abliterate spam offering me nasty ass coochie and ways to enlarge my penis that any rational being knows for a fact don't work. I have to deal with web pages so graphics-heavy it takes my poor little analog modem fifteen minutes to finish loading the page, and everywhere I turn some aliterate twit is either taking offense because I disagree with them, or else chastizing me for writing posts that are too long, or using words that they don't understand. [:@] Grrr.
But no, I can't really say that it's an epidemic. It's just the universe establishing a new equilibrium. I think it's going to take a few more generations before our society really stabilizes, and until then, there's going to be a lot of boat rocking while we adjust to the ever-changing newness of now.
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