Are we short on attention?

My friend Maggie Jackson has an interesting book out on the question. It prompted this lively exchange over at Mind Hacks.

My take, which I wrote up last fall, is here. That essay explains why I don't think there are too many demands on our attention in the digital age. I think we feel that there are, because digital information comes wrapped in packages that blink, chime, beep, go red and shout ``Act Now!'' Our media is full of devices that short-circuit our natural abilities to ignore the unimportant.

So we don't have too little attention for the demands of life. We have too much anxiety about attention. Which is good news, actually, because anxiety is an emotion we can master.