Sunday, April 5, 2009

Hayles' Hyper and Deep Attention Presentation

"We are in the midst of a generational shift in cognitive styles that poses challenges to education at all levels, including colleges and universities."

Introduction
  • Shift is already present in college students.
  • Effects will be fully present when 12 year old children reach higher education.

Hyper Attention and the Challenge to Higher Education

  • University of Southern California, under the direction of Scott Fisher.
  • Laboratory that experiments with new methods to provide greater stimulation.
  • 14 large screens on the walls for display space.

Interactions

  • Google Jockeying: Speaker makes presentation, participants search the web for appropriate content to display on screens (e.g. examples, definitions, images, other views).
  • Backchanneling: Speaker makes presentation, participants write comments and notes.

Participant Feedback

  • Backchanneling: "The speaker function becomes more about seeding ideas and opening up discussion."
  • Share responsibility of comments.
  • Challenges the audience to pay attention, speaker to hold attention, and interact towards a shared goal.

Other Experiements

  • The Education of Henry Adams: Dry wit, historical details, demands deep attention.
  • Self-presentation at Facebook introduction to help anaylze text and assign students to compose Facebook enteries for the book's ironic persona.
  • Computer game Riven: Five islands where brothers compete for dominance.
  • Access to narrative can be gained by solving games puzzles.
  • William Faulkner's novel Absalon, Absalon!: Solving puzzles of identity, motivation, and desire.
  • Emily Short's Galatea: Engage the artificial intelligience in realistic conversation to understand her backstory, motivations, and pyschology.
  • Richard Power's Galatea: Use the interactions of the protagonist with the artifical intelligence Helen to understand his backstory, motivations, and pyschology.
  • "These differences notwithstanding, the challenge implicit in both works is for the reader or player to understand the personae through narration, a perspective that brings into view common ground between hyper and deep attention.

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