Hacker News Reader

Comment by BitwiseFool | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this question is coming from an earnest place, but does it not stand to reason that the sheer amount of information we have almost ubiquitous access to, combined with personalized content recommendation, means that we are more distracted than a medieval person who had no exposure to such things? How would one even try to assert this empirically?

View on HN

A medieval person also didn't go through school, likely wasn't taught how to read or forced to work through math problems and do almost 20 years of schooling with the intention of improving their thinking skills, analytical skills, memory and attention.

So it is not obvious at all which effects dominate and if this isn't just the same drivel that Gessner spouted in the 1500's about how books and the printing press were going to create an information overload and ruin our attention

- https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/a-history-of-media-tech...

- https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654293

Wouldn't they have to be more mindful of safety and personal health. Like an increase in dangers from criminals, food, buildings, etc

Given how popular TikTok and short form content is with the younger generations who are currently in school or just graduated from 20 something years of schooling, I don't think all that intention of improving their "thinking skills, analytical skills, memory and attention" is that effective at countering contemporary distractions. Have you seen the latest trend where Gen Z'ers zone out by watching a TikTok that has a family guy clip, some arts and crafts clip, and some gameplay footage all on the same screen? It is the epitome of distraction and it's catching on like wildfire because people watching these switch between each subject on screen just enough to hold their attention. The algorithm is rewarding that, so more and more TikToks have composite videos.

Going back to the subject of contemporary education, one could also speculate that ~20 years of schooling replacing ~20 years of apprenticeship and mastery of a single craft makes the ability to resist distraction worse. Perhaps teaching someone to make wagon wheels for 20 years makes them better able to focus on a single thing than teaching them to learn all sorts of different subjects for a few hours each day?

People like to look back at previous generation's moral panics, but I can't help but think there was an element of truth to many of them.

> People like to look back at previous generation's moral panics, but I can't help but think there was an element of truth to many of them.

What is the element of truth then? What was the negative impact of the printing press and how did it end society and our ability to pay attention to things?

It's so strange to have someone hear that their concern has existed for hundreds of years, the doom and gloom never materialized, and yet still double down on the same thing. What besides your intuition or the fact you share the same fear actually would lead you to think that this time it's different and tiktok is the technology that'll ruin us?

>the doom and gloom never materialized

I mean, didn't it for some people? The church lost their ability to be the sole source of the bible once printing presses started churning out books. So the church lost a significant aspect of their influence on the public.

In effect when there are people screaming about societal changes it typically means they stand to lose some position of power they currently hold because of it.

You're introducing unrelated things. This thread is about human's attention span, ability to focus and memorize due to how we consume media as new technologies are developed.

It's not about a technology being able to displace power away from a specific organization or not. That's not an argument anyone was making here.

>"What was the negative impact of the printing press and how did it end society and our ability to pay attention to things?"

That's quite a leap from what I said. I took the stance that there is an element of truth, or at the very least a valid concern. Not that the printing press was going to end society. The tone of the linked article is definitely dismissive, something akin to "why be concerned, look at all these similar panics. We're doing just fine."

>"His warnings referred to the seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press."

This is exactly what happened. The printing press was fundamental to the Catholic/Protestant schism, enabled political pamphleteering, and is what caused newspapers to come into existence. Yes, society survived this, but the concern was no doubt real and realized. As for "the doom and gloom never materialized", what is fake news and misinformation but an unmanageable flood of information?

>"or the fact you share the same fear actually would lead you to think that this time it's different and tiktok is the technology that'll ruin us?"

You're putting words in my mouth. I do not think TikTok is going to ruin society, but I do believe it is having a negative effect on many individuals within it. You had mentioned "doubling down on the same thing", but I think that is misplaced. Superficially the concern is the same, but the cause is different. There hasn't been anything like TikTok and algorithmic recommendation in the history of civilization, so it would be wrong to dismissively assume the panic will pass and concerns about its effects are unfounded and unwarranted because that's what happened with books, radio, television, and so on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com