#next11 - Driven to Distraction

Warning: Liveblogging. Here be inaccuracy, errors and typos

Here goes a session on attention, distraction and obsession:

Jeremy Tai Abbett has set himself a challenge: answering a question

What is continuous partial attention?

Four steps to Zen:

1. Infinite Resources

Moores law – where once it was number of users per computer, but 100s of computers per user. Digital is making a lot of things obsolete. The music industry is “pretty fucked”. Music is no longer about distribution. Digital photography has made film obsolete. The Kindle is quickly replacing print books. Publishing companies – the iPad is meant to save them, but we’ll see…

The old model was about scarcity. The new model is all about abundance. What was scarce before – information – is now abundant. But our attention hasn’t gone up. attention is the new scarcity.

We have: infinite resources and limited attention

2. New Behaviours

Attention no longer focuses on the TV – it’s on the phone, the iPad, the iPad, the computer… And consumers are now producers. Messages from friends drown our commercial messages – we’re no longer as important as we were. Everybody wants to be at the middle of the social graph.

Old thing x new technology = FAIL

You NEED new thinking

3. Opt-out

Highly technical people are dictating how we communicate with each other. The least social people are dictating how we interact. They force us to opt-out not opt-in. There’s software that kills you internet connections for a set time to allow you to focus. Opt out is the new opt-in.

4. Question Everything

The rise of makers shows that people are happy to take things apart and make new things, and recognise that things aren’t the work of just one. The questions can be as important as the answers. question everything and answer only to yourself.

Dan Rollman is talking about the Universal Record Database – a crowd-sourced Guinness Book of World Records, based on the ideas that everyone can be the best at something, however bizarre. It was born from his adolescent desire to break records.

It’s a company employing eight people. People are often inventing records based on brands. For the last few years they’ve been working with brands for one off events, campaigns and now brand channels.

I want one of those yellow jackets…

Rollman has set us a record to break:

Rex Sorgatz worries that being over-connected is the new over-educated.