I believe that Attention Deficit Disorder is a figment of the plural imagination of drug companies and the authors of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (which may or may not be deeply tied).

As a teenager I was diagnosed with A.D.D., and subsequently medicated, and I can’t say that I ever believed the disorder existed.  In short I thought that, in my case, I was just in the wrong school with the wrong teachers, classmates and place.  I proved my thesis when I left that school and transferred to one where there was more latitude I flourished and went from being a poor student to a very good one.  Keep in mind that I was selecting the courses I wanted to take - the A.D.D effectively dissapeared.

As of late, and in tune with others, I have noticed that my attention span has decreased drastically.  I have put down good, interesting books recently because of my dwindling attention span - I used to finish novels in a day.  Sometimes it takes me hours to finish a 10 line email because I’m distracted by tasks that pop up, and my immediate space which is constantly, ringing, pinging, vibrating, and chiming for my attention reminding me of tasks that need to be completed.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done validates this modus operandi as it allows two minute tasks to get done as soon as they pop-up in a persons scope. Otherwise, it does allow for other items to be classified in a more discrete system of accountability.

I’m a big fan of trend watching.  I once read somewhere, don’t remember where, that ideas are not unique, isolated spheres of thought that pop into a person’s head like a cartoon character, but movements that sweep humanity at once - I would argue the same applies for phenomenons.  If you have a great idea, chances are that somebody else, at some point in the globe will be having a variation of your idea soon before/after the moment you had it.  That being said, I tend to think that this is a trend and that people, very generally speaking, who are symbolic analysts suffer from this phenomenon of attention dispersion.

In terms of interaction design this is an interesting subject to ponder.  We are at right before the vertex of a movement that will provide us with a more punctual interaction with the hardware/software that surrounds us.  At this moment people interact with different devices, each with its own form factor, each with its own collection of applications and software, each having its own unique user experience.  We are drowning in articles, posts, feeds, events, messages that require time to process in order to determine if they are important or not.  This takes up most of our time, in adittion to interacting with the machine, as a function of time/learning curve and other factors such as navigability.  As nanotechnology moves forward, as the web becomes a more distributed service and communication platform (instead of a destination), as the services,  tools and applications we use are embedded into smaller and smaller devices, and as we realize that we are wasting away in front of an LCD screen we will be able to recover our attention span because our interaction with machines will allow us to do that, more so, they will encourage us to do so.  They will be architected to accomplish the taks of freeing us from our devices and the content we deem as irrelevant to us.  The user experience will become a more homogeneous experience for better or worse.

This post was inspired by Samiq’s review of Amazon’s Kindle, whom I met yesterday at lunch, thanks to Andrea Tanzi.