Continuous Partial Attention Teaching and Learning in the Age of Interruption

Abstract

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the computer, and the seemingly endless repositories of data it generated, gave rise to what has been called The Age of Information. Today, the Internet and handheld devices offer the additional possibility of constant connectivity, which means that these technologies become sources of both endless information and perpetual distraction. For this reason, Thomas Friedman (2006) insists that we have moved from the Age of Information to the Age of Interruption. “All we do now, ” he says, “is interrupt each other or ourselves with instant messages, e-mail, spam or cellphone rings.” In the Age of Interruption, there is plenty of information, but attention has become a correspondingly scarce resource. “What the Net seems to be doing,” observed Nicholas Carr (2008) in a controversial Atlantic article, “is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation ” (p. 57). A number of other recent books and articles speak to a similar concern: the technology that was once associated with intelligence, and a widespread optimism about its power to liberate the human mind, is increasingly portrayed as diminishing our capacity to pay attention, to stop and think.

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