Anyone who has ever taught an student with Attention Deficit Disorder can tell you what it looks like. The forgotten homework, the disaster inside the desk, the unfinished assignment inside the backpack. They’re all telltale signs. The adult with ADD is equally identifiable. His is the house half painted, the one with the Christmas lights still up and that bathroom remodeling job half finished.
Soon will all have ADD. I am training my mind right now. I’m reading text on the computer with multiple links. Everytime my mind wants to wander somewhere, I let it. I just click on a link and go. Where was I? I forget. Oh well, I guess I’ll just follow a link. This is the new world. Technology will enable us let our minds go off into all sorts of directions, depending on a sort of free association. George P. Landow writes about this in his book Hypertext 3.0. How nifty. He describes how technology is making us all readers and authors because hypertext allows us to let our brains just wander off wherever they want.
My sister and I used to play this game when we were little. Before we fell asleep each night we’d play a word game we made up called free association. I’d say “book,” and she’d say something like “Nancy Drew.” I’d come back with “detective” and she’d say “badge.” On and on we’d go until one of us couldn’t come up with a link. That made us the loser.
I guess this is how the new technological world will be. Can’t link? You lose. But here’s the thing. Playing free association doesn’t let you think (or is that link?) about anything for very long. If you linger and concentrate, you’re not following the links. It’s sort of like skipping rocks along a river. You toss them so they never really drop deep into the water, they just skim the surface, moving quickly from spot to spot. You’ll cover a lot of lake, just not very deeply.
I use this metaphor often with my writing students. I tell the ones with underdeveloped ideas they are writing like they are skipping rocks along a river. They jump from one idea to the next. They never throw their rock into the river and make it sink to the bottom. They don’t stay in one idea place long enough to explore it in all its implications.
Some people think this is a good thing. (If you followed this last link, I hope you remembered to come back.) I think it’s rewiring our brains to have ADD.
