Maggie Jackson on 'Distracted' and the fragmentation of attention

Rob Hopkins

Today we're talking about technology and the fragmentation of attention with Maggie Jackson. After an early career as a foreign correspondent, Maggie returned to the US and began writing about workplace and worklife issues. She began noticing the impact of early technologies such as laptops and cellphones on people. At that time, the tone of the national conversation was quite utopian and, Maggie felt, naive. "I call it the gee-whiz factor", she told me, "many people truly thought that technologies were going to solve our problems, connect us, teach us, transport us, magically and painlessly". Voicing any concerns or pointing out downsides easily had one labelled as a Luddite. In 2008, many years before the current debates around technology and attention, Maggie wrote the book 'Distracted', which dived into the science of attention and the steep costs of its fragmentation. She is currently working on a book about uncertainty as the gateway to good thinking in an age of snap judgement. We chatted recently by Skype, and I started by asking her what it was that she spotted in 2008 that made her concerned enough to sit down and write 'Distracted'.