Alexis' (late night) Response

[Larsson, Anna]

#337

I have only very intermittent computer access this weekend, so I’ll have to make my response pretty brief.

“The answer to the ‘scarce resource’ question for societies in developed countries seems clear: the sheer onslaught of information has created a situation in which the limiting factor is human attention” (12).

Although I resonate with much of what Hayles covers in her introduction, she occasionally lays down a sentence that feels ‘off.’ In this case, she’s taking on the term ‘scarce resource’ from Fred Brooks, but she doesn’t acknowledge the laden eco-political baggage of the term. She compares scarce resources of human attention to the lightness lacking in a “NASA moon shot” and “ocean-front footage” in a beach house, but vacation homes and trips to the moon are institutions property more to an image of the US than a reality lived by its citizens. I am also suspicious of lumping the US together with other “developed countries.” Human attention isn’t entirely dependent on the amount of available and compelling information; it is perhaps not the case that other “developed countries” are such poor architects of time as are we. Perhaps she’ll go more into her explanation of the differences she perceives in human attention and cognition according to differences in reading later. In the meantime, I’ll declare my agreement that close reading requires, among other things, a “high tolerance for boredom.” I’m curious about Ian Bogosts “slow games” and the possibilities for building this tolerance with video games, but I would appreciate any support I can find to the argument that building a capacity for boredom is one of the single greatest intellectual achievements a human can make. In my life as a student, I have been around people who praise others for their cleverness but almost never do I hear similar praise for one’s capacity for boredom. I also wonder how the boredom involved in a close reading compares to the boredom of answering phones at a help desk, of filling out forms, or of sitting in traffic on the commute home.

Lastly, I don’t quite understand “materiality.” I am perhaps missing a link in the chain of theory here. She writes it a couple of times, including in the following passage:

“On the level of conscious thought, attention comes into play as a focusing action that codetermines what we call materiality. That is, attention selects from the vast (essentially infinite) repertoire of physical attributes some characteristics for notice, and they in tern constitute an object’s materiality. Materiality, like the object itself, is not a pre-given entity but rather a dynamic process that changes as the focus of attention shifts. Perceptions exist unconsciously as well as consciously, and research emerging from contemporary neuroscience, psychology, and other fields about the “new unconscious” . . . plays a critical role in understanding this phenomenon” (14).

It seems that “materiality” here is something like the relatively few things we are aware of about a given thing. Is there more to this concept? She seems to be arguing for its specific and continued use, so I feel like I’m missing something.

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