Step Back In Time At The Mesa Typewriter Exchange by [[Phil Latzman]]

Typewriters? In 2024? Are You Nuts? by Jesse M. Slater for [[Raconteur Press]]

A short, but relatively solid typewriter 101 story for someone looking for a distraction-free writing machine. Certainly not completist, but enough to get your toes wet.

Slater uses his typewriter for a first draft, then edits the second draft as he re-types it into his computer to have a digital copy for further editing and distribution.

The benefits of using a typewriter to write novels and poetry. by [[Classic Typewriter]]

https://astrohaus.com/freewrite/

08:00 New information gives dopamine. Distraction arises from too many information that is goal irrelevant.

1:05:00 going to dark places, not media & technology

• see zk on using media as distraction

• for: polycrisis, Trumpism, Chaos, distraction, climate crisis, climate communication, complexity, adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, adjacency climate change big oil, adjacency climate change politics big oil, quote adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, quote adjacency climate change big oil
• key insight
  • claim
    • One big reason that big oil is funding GOP to keep the chaotic Trump story as the main headline is to foster distraction from climate change impacts
    • big news story in the US is Donald Trump and the election, climate change impacts of extreme weather is minimized
    • the distraction of politics from a chaotic GOP is perfect distraction for the masses to ignore climate change and for big oil to continue BAU
• paraphrase
• quote
  • when you take a step back and look at that part of the distraction and the chaos that Trump and these GOP trolls deliver
  • it's it's a wonderful Boon for the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers and the guys that fund these campaigns and the federal Federalist Society that's owning the Supreme Court
  • they want to keep doing business as usual and the easiest way to do that is
    • to have this big chaotic GOP that ignores climate change and
    • to play into what they want
      • the mainstream media not focusing more on climate change let alone making those two connections
    • a lot of mainstream media is scared to make that connection because oil companies are paying the bills of CNN and every other network
• author
  • Noel Casler

05:00 consumption as running away from suffering

20% performance loss due to context switching. I would love to study the original research on this…

Ryfe and Kemmelmeier not only show that this development goes much further back into the past and first appeared in newspapers (the quotes of politicians got almost halved between 1892 and 1968), but also posed the question if this can maybe also be seen as a form of increased professionalism of the media as they do not just let politicians talk as they wish (Ryfe and Kemmelmeier 2011). Craig Fehrman also pointed out the irony in the reception of this rather nuanced study – it was itself reduced to a soundbite in the media (Fehrman 2011).

Soundbites have decreased in length over time.

What effects are driving this? What are the knock on effects? What effect does this have on the ability for doubletalk to take hold? Is it easier for doubletalk and additional meanings to attach to soundbites when they're shorter? (It would seem so.) At what point to they hit a minimum?

What is the effect of potential memes which hold additional meaning of driving this soundbite culture?

Example: "Lock her up" as a soundbite with memetic meaning from the Trump 2016 campaign in reference to Hilary Clinton.

The idea of a "focus mode" or "distraction free mode" is exactly the wrong framing for writing. You don't want to focus on the nothing and emptiness of a page or a screen. You want to start by focusing on an idea and preferably many ideas. Do this first and then proceed from there.

Probably overbearing, but this is also the exact sort of thing a writer faced with a blank page is apt to focus on as they stare at the type ball in front of them. Their focus isn't on the work its on the thing immediately in front of them that isn't working for them.

Given the diversions of modern digital life, perhaps the best way to do one's writing is to do it at the moment of reading the actual references. Often while reading, one isn't as apt to have their attention diverted by the vagaries of life, instead they are focused on the thing at hand. It is while one has this focused attention that they should let their note taking practice while reading take over.

Even if you are distracted, you can at least maintain focus on a single line of text and your thoughts related to it and write them down in either a summary sentence or with a few related ideas which are sparked by the initial idea.

(This note is such an example.)

Then one can start and complete a small idea at a time and then letting them build over time and space, then recollect them to create a piece which then doesn't need to be written and painfully created, but which may only need an outline structure and some final polish and editing.

PrameelaApr. 15, S. E., 2021, & Pm, 2:00. (2021, April 15). As a Ph.D. student, sharing my perspective on social media felt scary—But it’s worth it. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2021/04/phd-student-sharing-my-perspective-social-media-felt-scary-it-s-worth-it

Poland, G. A., & Jacobson, R. M. (2011, January 12). The Age-Old Struggle against the Antivaccinationists (world) [N-perspective]. Http://Dx.Doi.Org/10.1056/NEJMp1010594; Massachusetts Medical Society. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1010594

Usher, E., Golding, J. M., Han, J., Griffiths, C. S., McGavran, M. B., Brown, C. S., Sheehan, E. A. (2020). Psychology Students’ Motivation and Learning in Response to the Shift to Remote Instruction During COVID-19. [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. 10.31234/osf.io/xwhpm

In the abstract, the study cited points to "dual-task effects of fulfilling the assignment and working with the computer resulting in a higher cognitive workload".

Although this load may decrease with people getting more and more familiar with computers (and computers getting more and more intuitive), it is also the case that more distractors are available too.

This reminds me of a webinar hosted by Hypothesis in which Amanda Licastro mentioned Cathy Davidson's book "Now you see it" to talk about "Productive Multitasking". In the view that Amanda presented (at least what I understood of what she said), multitasking and distractions are unavoidable, but we can canalize them productively through web annotation, for example -instead of switching to Facebook and disconnect from what we were reading.

I chose this article because its topic speaks to our time. Also, this article has a lot of great links out just in case you want to learn more about the topics the authors speak of.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00805/full

This study conducted by four psychologists of three different Italian Universities shows the effects of mindfulness meditation on 7 and 8 year olds in Italian primary school. Here's what they say:

we found a specific positive effect of the mindfulness-meditation training in reducing attention problems and also positive effects of both trainings in reducing children’s internalizing problems. However, subjectively, no child in either group reported less depressive symptoms after the trainings. The findings were interpreted as suggestive of a positive effect of mindfulness-meditation on several children’s psychological well-being dimensions and were also discussed in light of the discrepancy between teacher and children’s reports.

The study was shown to, "improve children's cognitive, emotional, and social abilities...", particularly with children who had a healthy mental state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

http://www.chabris.com/Simons1999.pdf

This is the video of the test that was described, along with the essay ‘Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events’ describing the phenomenon, written by two Harvard psychology researchers David Simon and Christopher Charibus. When the viewers focus on the white team passing the basketball, they experience both change blindness and inattentional blindness. They define change blindness as the lack of detection of large changes in objects or scenes and inattentional blindness as paying so little attention to an object that you cease to notice it entirely.

Their conclusion is that, “we perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention.”, and without us committing our sustained focused attention on a specific object or event (like looking for a moonwalking gorilla in the middle of a basketball game), then we fail to register it entirely.

This demonstrates the incredible power of distraction. When we are distracted, not only do we find it more difficult to quickly switch back to the task we were doing previously, but by severing our sustained focus on something to check the new notification on our iPhone, we potentially miss really obvious connections. All the more reason to “pay attention to attention”, as Rheingold says.

As Rheingold points out in the paragraph below, some distraction is ingrained in evolutionary human instinct, like, "jumping at a loud noise or applying the brakes at the sight of a dog in the road...". But this distraction is not what he describes as 'peripheral stimuli'. This stimulus is rooted not in productivity nor rest, but in distraction. A cell phone buzz from a Twitter like or a SnapChat eagerly waiting to be responded to, is a constant sap on our attention.

As he points out later, the human brain can only hold seven (give or take two) thoughts at one time. The near-constant presence of our smartphones and digital devices represent distraction that disrupts our focus on productive tasks. Even as I type this annotation, I'm also thinking about the playlist I'm listening to on Spotify and the three new notifications from GroupMe awaiting my attention. Rheingold takes the view that a smartphone is an incredibly powerful and useful tool, but just like any tool, there's a proper way to use it optimally. This optimization of digital tools includes not just the notification settings of the actual device to manage distraction, but also human agency. Putting your device in another room, or turning it off for an hour is one way we can improve our attention. Mindfulness and equipping a digital mindset is another. Rheingold's overarching goal in 'Net Smart' is to acknowledge the benefits of the Internet age and improve our digital lives without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Awakening is complete when you delight in Life. Delight indicates union of spiritual and material, the inside and outside, the 3D and 4D.

Paul finds it very hard to accept this, he is distracted by his present financial challenges.

Isn't this (focus on 3dRef) what keeps us bound to the illusion?