Attention Spanning Generations

     The younger generation sat nearby engrossed in their devices, as the adults sat lamenting the effects of human attention being trained on inanimate sources, whose only objectives seem selling products and services one doesn't need or will harm us.

     We recalled The Interpreter—for me delightful and distressing in equal measure—I lost too much money and worked too hard publishing it, but never felt more engaged. "A kind of final Hurrah before the alien invasion of devices," an adult conjectured.

     Then I recalled interviewing Maude Hutton and other members of a generation ago, now all 100+ or gone: the first thing they did when you entered, was shut off the TV. In my generation that had already eroded turning it down.

A good conversation (Thanks to Imelda et al.) is a critical eye opener: We have been skidding down the slippery slope of devices for a long time.