Continuous Partial Attention

I spent today at the first official day of the Supernova 2007 conference, a conference organized by Wharton Professor Kevin Werbach. One of the more interesting sessions that I attended featured folks from Technorati, Feedburner, Twitter, Adaptive Path, and Cisco discussing the changing forces in the advertising market. A key theme emerged around the difficulty in marketing in an environment where consumers exist in a state of “continuous partial attention”.

Perhaps the greatest real time example of the phenomenon was the session room itself. In a room of 40-50 people, 30 – or more - had laptops open, most actively typing. Many of them were likely taking notes on the session or posting messages to the myriad of services that were to meant to capture “continuous” commentary (see the conference’s Jaiku channel if you want an example). But many others (including those attempting to take notes) were likely answering email, instant messaging colleagues, and attending to unrelated tasks (I will count myself amongst the indicted here). In a session during the previous day’s “unconference“, I watched in partial amazement as an attendee next to me listened to a conference call on a laptop-connected headset, answered IM, and in parallel listened to the session itself. This individual, to his credit, actually managed to take off the headset and interject intelligent commentary into the flow of conversation.

This champion multi-tasker aside, this state of partial attention cannot be good. Not only is it not good for advertisers, it can’t possibly be good for us as individuals to exist in a state of partial awareness. It will ultimately leave us less engaged in the quality content standing right in front of us. I am a fervent believer in the power of technology and new communications platforms (my career is built on it!), but I think that in a rapid push for collaboration and contribution we risk degrading the quality of any individual interaction.

Interestingly a conference meant to showcase next generation technologies left me scratching my head about some of the deeper human implications of their uses. But, maybe I just didn’t get it? Maybe at tomorrow’s sessions I will just have to try to pay better attention.

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Ted Shelton Says:

June 21, 2007 at 5:24 am

Thanks for saying that our session was on of the “more interesting!”

I have two thoughts about continuous partial attention and whether or not it is “good” for us. You write, “it will ultimately leave us less engaged in the quality content standing right in front of us.” Undoubtedly that happens (and always has). I think that continuous partial attention is, however, a symptom of the fact that a lot of the content standing right in front of us is NOT quality. And when the quality IS high, I think we do stop and give it our full attention. Sadly that just isn’t very often.

The other one thought is about whether “continous partial attention” is really anything very new. I remember my mother having dinner going in the kitchen, ironing, and watching the TV out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t engaged in multiple media consumption experiences simultaneously — but she was giving her partial attention to multiple tasks.

Maybe the biggest change is that we now have so many different mediums stimulating us and craving our attention that the ironing isn’t getting done.

perpetualmotion Says:

June 21, 2007 at 6:11 am

Hey Ted,

Very good points and I really like the ironing analogy. Although my childhood memories are of my father having the opposite problem and always wholly captivated by the TV – much to the chagrin of my mother =)

I also agree that partial attention is not only the result of an adundance of content but also the result of a lack of quality. I guess I fear that it can sometimes become a self perpetuating cycle with individuals contributing spontaneous half-baked commentary into an already diluted content pool making the signal to noise ratio even worse.

I do think that the Technorati’s of the world can play a huge role in tracking, organizing, and prioritizing this content and making it more digestable!

gabrielbcn Says:

June 21, 2007 at 11:15 am

You’re right, the continuous partial attention it’s nothing that new, but we’ve sort of become used to quick browsing everything and loosing attention so easily that sometimes that acts as a limit for learning. Didn’t you start liking something after spending a lot of time just listening to it or reading it? which that much choice, who’s stopping you from change? how does that affect the cognitive and learning cycle? I think it does, and very.

I have to think about all this. Good point

Clear Admit: MBA Admissions Consultants Blog » Fridays From the Frontline Says:

June 22, 2007 at 6:39 am

[...] responding to emails and carrying on Instant Messenger conversations, leading him to question the distracted state of multi-tasking that envelopes the business executive’s daily life. Across the world in Singapore, Zanat0s [...]

EP Says:

July 9, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Hi,

I’ve been reading your blog for a little while now and I’m really enjoying it – good insight. A few fellow business school students and I just started a site called bschoolers.com, which is an “open” community blog by, and for, the business school community. We’d be really interested in having you contribute postings and join the community. Check out the site and definitely sign up for an account so you can start posting. Hopefully it can start to be a universally useful resource for b-schoolers.

Also We’ll be adding a link to your site, as a useful resource, and we’d certainly love a reciprocal link.

Best,

Eli