[This post is the second in a series from new media artist Peggy Nelson considering the impact of technology on narrative. Nelson's work includes a barcode narrative, a PowerPoint essay, Twitter novels and a host of exciting new ways of looking at the idea of story. —Ed. ]
No one, it seems, has time to read an article, never mind a book. Books, like fine art before them, have receded from the intuitive routine of everyday life. These days, we have to make a differentiated, focused effort to concentrate on reading. Like art set aside in a gallery or museum that requires a special visit, now books too require a special gallery of attention in your mind. You must set aside time, and set aside space, and of course set aside the Internet so you can’t just check your messages or update Twitter in between chapters. Or — who are we kidding? — in between pages. We’re getting our entertainment — or news, or information, or even our meditative moments — here and there, interspersed throughout the day, while doing other things.
Our short attention spans provoke much lamentation, but it’s really nothing new. According to a PBS documentary on vaudeville, an act was viable if it could manage to keep the audience’s attention for three minutes. Three minutes!! That’s a span we can understand — approximately the length of the average YouTube video, or a popular song.
A detail from "Blue" by Peggy Nelson
People have been complaining about the speed and fragmentation of modern life since well before there was a “modern” to complain about. And now that we’ve become modern, or even post-, it’s faster and more fragmentary than anyone anticipated, and looks to be going ever further in that direction.
But maybe this is not bad. This is not good versus evil going 40 rounds for the title. This, I would suggest, is something more neutral. Fragmentation and absorption are models of interaction. And like all models they invite other perspectives.
For example, consider a book, back in the day when we had time for them. A nice, long book with hundreds of pages, one so good you don’t want it to end. You are completely immersed, looking forward to the end of the day when you can lose yourself in it again, staying up past your bedtime for just a few more pages. Good, right? Our lost Eden, right? But now consider: what may be absorption and focus from one angle could be irresponsible escapism from another. What are you doing with yourself while reading that book? Hiding from your surroundings, spending hours of time alone and immobile, emerging to measure real things in your life by the imaginary story? Replace “book” with “Internet” and this looks a lot like addiction.
Now consider a Facebook game like FarmVille, Twitter novels like @ARTGatz or my own @adelehugo, or a film or series broken up into short segments, such as the YouTube comedy series The Guild, perfect for viewing in a corner of your screen at work. What may be fragmentary and distracted frittering from one point of view might also be a way to integrate the experience of art into everyday life. When traveling I have seen microfilms in subway cars. The tiny TV screens in taxis show local news and weather updates, although they are heavily bracketed by advertising. Their problem is not that they are short but that they are using most of that minute or two to “sell” us.
I’m not advocating a complete replacement of long with short, nor am I claiming, with Pangloss, that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” I don’t think that bullet points are or should be a substitute for an in-depth story. But I am saying these are models of interaction, and there’s always more than one way to look at, and use, a model.
In addition, there’s often a future concealed within the fragment. For example, take FarmVille: You check in every day for weeks, maybe months, as you tend your virtual 2.5D farm with your friends. It’s not a narrative, but it provides a location for a tentative community. Or consider what happens as you follow a Twitter feed: it accumulates over time to a portrait of an individual, and occasionally, may even develop into a relationship. Short pieces may be grouped in series and provide a long-form in aggregate; and they may be stepping stones to an eventual community or relationship, in which new stories are built on and relate to a shared history of previous ones.
Some good examples of short-form nonfiction series include The New York Times’ One in 8 Million project, The Globe and Mail’s “Behind the Veil,” Sundance Channel’s documentary shorts, or the short investigative clips on Current TV.
Online spaces are often considered in opposition to real-life communities, and suffer in the comparison. But it’s not so much that online community should be measured as a poor substitute for something more “real” – it is more that we use every space in which we interact as a location for community, and we use every available technology to do it – whether that technology is bricks and mortar, the Internet, the printed page or even language itself. The larger context for narrative includes not just the stories, or the tellers, but of course the listeners. Ideally, a story finds or activates a large audience engaged with the issues; in an interview with the Harvard Business Review, Jane Goodall touches on the importance of storytelling in changing both attitudes and behaviors.
So it’s not a single story we need to be looking at – it’s related stories, too, as well as the places where stories are collected and accessed. And we need to look at how people are using those places, and how we might better activate the narrative potential of all user behaviors, including some that may not seem to be directly relevant.
In other words, small increments, doled out consistently over long periods of time, can accumulate to — in *some cases — significance. Of course this does not happen with every interaction, every storyline, or every online experience. But it is happening. Within our short attention span theater we may be building long-term networks—and rehearsing new models for long-form storytelling.
[This post is an expanded version of a piece Nelson originally wrote for HiLobrow.com. For related thinking, read HiLobrow editor Matthew Battles’ look at how the Internet influences the way we read and learn, published in a series over at Nieman Lab.]
7 comments
Books always a matter of economics, long Russian novels and Dickens magazine installments a matter of pay rates. Long form will survive in some form, question is what.
there is a new economy of attention
Why speak only of *irresponsible* escapism? Tolkien, the populist master of the long form, wrote thus in his 1939 essay “On Fairy-Stories”, but the point is applicable to literature, and even to books in general, whatever their genre.
“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all.
“In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought.
“Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.
“In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. [...]
“In the same way these critics, to make confusion worse, and so to bring into contempt their opponents, stick their label of scorn not only on to Desertion, but on to real Escape, and what are often its companions, Disgust, Anger, Condemnation, and Revolt. [...]“
Thanks for the historical perspective about the longer history of shorter form narratives.
A couple of nits, though.
One can – and many do – use books and other long-form narratives for escapism, but I don’t think FarmVille is an example of the kind of engagement in real-life issues that I imagine Jane Goodall would promote.
And I would argue that “spending hours of time alone and immobile” is an essential practice for cultivating depth of character and vision, whether one is reading a book, meditating, or producing a book, article or some other long form of artistic expression.
For a far more elaborate and compelling essay on the value of solitude, and occasionally tuning out from all forms of online media, I highly recommend William Deresiewicz’ article in American Scholar: Solitude and Leadership.
Marta Graupera Sanz
You are correct. The user, the story, the medium, they all matter. Take for instance this definition of dynamics: The social, intellectual, or moral forces that produce activity and change in a given sphere.
This is what I am getting from Peggy.
Thank you for your great comments!
John, you and Tolkien are certainly right that there is more than one sense of escape and escapism, and that some of them are quite positive. Certainly one of the places the future is, if not born, then certainly conceived, is the country of the imagination.
In referring to “irresponsible escapism” above, I am taking what is often said of heavy internet use, and showing that the same argument can be applied to long-form reading, drawing a parallel between internet and reading behaviors, and showing that, in certain important ways, they are not very different. To praise the latter while dismissing or condemning the former is inconsistent at best, and a misreading at worst, one that imposes unnecessary limitations to our imaginations, and any future behaviors that might spring from them.
There is also more than one sense of solitude, and Joe, I would agree with you that many of those senses are extremely valuable, both in their effects and in themselves; thank you for that link. In my piece, it was again in describing the argument usually levelled against heavy internet use – spending too much time alone, in the basement, wrapped up in the computer – where I brought up one of solitude’s senses, and its negative connotations. But this was in the context of it being the usual argument against internet use, and yet
the same behavior is praised when the object of contemplation is the paper-and-ink codex.
However, I would also agree that “solitude” or “being alone” is not quite the right description of intensive computer time today. Much of web 2.0 is social: Facebook, Twitter, email, comments on blogs, WoW and other games – and while there are other arguments to be made about the *type of social activity this is, and how it compares to face-to-face interaction, and whether or not it should be praised or condemned – the fact is that it is not solitude!
Marta and David, yes, economics always factor in. Although where they factor in is changing, I think. There is certainly an economy of attention, or at least we have been referring to one for some time – remember “sticky eyeballs” from the ‘90s? But there are at least two perspectives that I want to call out in this quick comment – one is the attempt to monetize the economy of attention, to translate page hits and click-throughs into money; in effect to translate one value system into another.
The second is more what I would call the “artist’s” sense, in which page hits, pingbacks and “reputation points” in effect substitute for monetary reward, and are pursued for their own sake. I do NOT think that either of these is better, necessarily, or that there are only two interpretations of economy (or attention, for that matter). But it matters when you’re trying to make a living from it, you’ll need a (second?) day-job if all you’re earning in the new journalism is reputation points.
Long-form storytellers are going to pursue long-form stories, whether by inner motivation, serialization, patronage, or some other collection of motivations. But how that connects up with a salary – I don’t think anyone is sure of that answer, except that it is very much in flux, and will undoubtedly look different than it does today.
Jerrald – yes, exactly! I am emphasizing the importance of context in this brave new world, and (hopefully) encouraging people to think outside the story itself, to its surrounding and changing components, for the shape of new stories to come.
The “attention theater” wonderfully summarizes the concept of scanning to see the wood hidden behind the trees. A coming breed of augmented (artificial) intelligent apps will do this across the many information fragments.
6 trackbacks
[...] Short attention span theater: narrative and models of interaction … [...]
[...] This post touches on a few hotly debated items about the internet, but what I was most interested in were items about storytelling. [...]
[...] Short attention span theater: narrative and models of interaction – Nieman Storyboard – A pr… Good answer to the "internet makes us shallow": Short attention span theater: narrative and models of interaction [...]
[...] version of a piece Nelson originally wrote for HiLobrow.com. For related thinking, read her earlier posts in this series on Nieman Storyboard.] this entry was written by Peggy Nelson, posted on at 1:47 am, filed [...]
[...] Short attention span theater | Nieman Foundation [...]
[...] Full article here. [...]