October 29th, 2012

QI: Educational institutions have specialized in these environments, combining such resources as quiet with an assigned task that demands deep attention to complete successfully. So standard has deep attention become in educational settings that it is the de facto norm, with hyper attention regarded as defective behavior that scarcely qualifies as a cognitive mode at all. This situation would present no problem if no generational shift from deep to hyper attention were taking place. But with the shift, serious incompatibilities arise between the expectations of educators, who are trained in deep attention and saturated with assumptions about its inherent superiority, and the preferred cognitive mode of young people, who squirm in the procrustean beds outfitted for them by their elders. We would expect a crisis, which would necessitate a reevaluation of the relative merits of hyper versus deep attention, serious reflection about how a constructive synthesis of the two might be achieved, and a thoroughgoing revision of educational methods. 

Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes
N. KATHERINE HAYLES
 pg. 188 

Q2:"This was me when I was 10 years old. This was in 1980."
Persepolis 
Marjane Satrapi 
pg. 3

Question: What sort of revision of educational methods can help with the general shift of attention from deep to hyper and how does Persepolis tie into this? 

The novel Persepolis opens with the author telling the story of her childhood. When first viewing the beginning chapter the reader beings with the statement "This was me when I was ten years old. This was in 1980," (3). This in a single pane of comic strip and the reader is able to spend two seconds glimpsing at the first part of the story.The way in which the comic reads caters to that hyper attention younger audiences prefer to sustain when trying to get things done. On a personal level, I was able to slam through 100 pages in a little less than an hour because things went by very swiftly. The novel Persepolis is preferential to most of the long novels that must be read opposed to deep reading.