Much has been written about the scarcity of attention in a time of abundant (read: flood, torrent, downpour of toads) information. There is the book, The Economics of Attention; Steve Rubel's post/meme, The Attention Crash; and my favorite post summarizing the issue from John Hagel:
"attention economics starts with the observation that, as products and information proliferate, attention becomes the scarce resource - we each have only 24 hours in the day. Where we choose to allocate this attention will increasingly determine who creates economic value and who destroys economic value."
Nowhere is that challenge made as life and death as in driving. We have done a lot of social marketing work around the problems of "Distracted Driving." Teens and new inexperienced drivers are hardest hit. In fact, Distratcted Driving - cell phone usage, changing CDs, eating, putting on makeup, etc... - is the number one killer of teens.
As my kids are approaching driving age (t-minus 3 years on Boy 13), and as I consider their particular media habits, I believe I have good cause to worry. There is more to do in the car. And young drivers are more at risk simply because they lack experience. So, in today's Post, we see that Virginia is considering a ban on texting while driving. Forget about the realities that these type of bans take (cell phone "restrictions" on youth in the state can only be enforced if the driver is stopped for something else), nowhere is UNDIVIDED attention more critical than in driving. Okay, brain surgery, firefighting, flying a jet are also pretty intense, but for most of us, driving is a daily routine. And you never know what the other knucklehead is going to do. I grew up on "defensive driving" - what a terrific social marketing story.
In a previous post, I tallied my kids current media habits. When they are ready to drive, those habits will likely migrate to new electronic behaviors. None of them should happen while driving in a car. The simple story is that any distraction robs us of our undivided attention on our driving and the others on the road.
So, what has desktop information overload have to do with connectivity behind the dashboard? Our ability to bounce between tasks on the computer gives us a false confidence that we can certainly do the same in something as industrial and pre-information age as the cockpit of a car. We cannot. Our attention is limited and scarce. And it is physically dangerous to divide it or "bounce" between tasks that are not road-related.
I am starting on a new series on New Media Literacy. What it takes to understand the new media defined in the broadest of terms - blogs, microblogging, co-created content, messaging, etc... Clearly my intent is focused on how we interpret and filter information. I am always interested in what I call digital influence - how we are all influenced in new ways by digitally-based innovations. And there is this aspect - how mobility of always-available information can actually impact our safety.
It's not an academic question when I look at my children and their friends.
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