The Poverty of Attention
Eons have passed since creation took her first breath. Innumerable, vast discoveries have been made. Man has transcended unimaginable levels in the search for advancement, a better life and ultimately, the pursuit of happiness. So far, I’d say there’s been great success despite major and minor setbacks alike.
All this advancement in various spheres of human life over the years seem to be happening at a speedy, almost alarming rate. Centuries ago, the greatest technology that existed was the printing press invented by Johann Guttenberg, a rather large and incredibly noisy machine. Today, we have the priviledge of typing whatever we like on our continually thinning electronic devices and printing them out on paper, right from the comfort of our beds via the ‘wireless’ printer.
At least two people were required to carry the first camera ever made; now almost everyone has the luxury of taking pictures on their mobile devices which also offer a vast array of other functions besides long and short-distance communication. With the way things are going, one cannot help but wonder what’ll be around in the next five, ten or fifteen years.
How did man stumble upon all this? Did earth come with an instruction manual for how to exploit its many secrets? Well, none that i know or have heard of.
Its information. A wealth of information coupled with man’s insatiable hunger for knowledge which propels advancement through proper, precise application of the knowledge of said information.
As years go by, there’s more information bubbling to the surface. The wealth seems never to dwindle or recede. The downside however, is that as we advance and as information becomes more readily available for consumption, humans suffer from an attention deficit. As devices get slimmer, faster and smarter, man gets fatter, slower and dumber. The desire to use faculties for various problem-solving activities has become almost non-existent. We’re now leaving it all to the machines. Name almost anything you could possibly think of doing today and you’ll realize there’s either an app or a device for it.
The ‘master’ is gradually and ignorantly becoming slave to his own invention. Attention to detail, to information, to one’s self and even loved ones has greatly reduced. I myself, am guilty of this as many of us are, allowing ourselves to be distracted by all the endless buzz around us.
We have to come to a point in which we decide that the billions of neurons with which we’ve been endowed would be put to proper use, paying attention to those things in our lives that truly matter, using the information around us to create the beauty we desire in our world and be all the better for it.
So help us God in this age in which we live. An age in which there’s a wealth of information but a poverty of attention