Stephen Downes

This article begins with an observation: "The same person who cannot get through a novel can watch a three-hour video essay on the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The same teenager who supposedly lacks attention span can maintain game focus for hours." The point is that what some people are calling a cognitive decline is actually a transition to multi-modality, and if sustained attention is a problem, it's more a problem of design and architecture, not modality. Then, as if to prove the point, this essay essentially repeats the same three or four points over and over through more than 3,000 words (yes, I counted). They're good points, sure, but they don't bear repeating that much.