The iPhone Attention Vortex - my iPhone experiences so far

I have had my 3G iPhone for about 4 weeks now and it has been an amazing learning experience. No, not just because I was learning how to deal with the stupendous battery problems, constant app crashes and outrageous roaming charges, but because I am trying to deal with the one big paradigm change that digital mobility and in particular this little Apple box has ushered into our lives: the drastic expansion of the Attention Vortex.

I can now do things on the mobile 'phone' that have never really been possible before; keeping me even more 'connected', distracted and mentally busy than ever before. Suddenly, here's an even easier way to read and share my 850+ RSS feeds (ouch... I can hear you say), check Friendfeed updates, tweet everything, read some longer columns, essays and even books via the totally cool instapaper app, browse my Facebook feed updates from my 1300+ cyber friends (yes... ouch, too), watch Youtube videos, draft and publish a blog post, or do another of the few dozen things that I have recently gotten into (plus look at my email and SMS). Yes, sure, I could do this before, too, on my good old Nokia e61 or my Blackberry or my EE PC. But this is another thing altogether: the iPhone's user interface and user experience is just so much more intuitive - and so much more tempting. An iPhone vortex so to speak. Only battery fatigue can save me now. Or, in the end, maybe Apple's bizarre desire to control it all?

Anyway, this is all very cool and engaging stuff that is floating around me now. But still: I only have one brain. I only have 24 hours in a day. I only have a certain amount of attention to give. Never mind the iPhone batteries - how about my own?  That is my real worry.

I see a huge tidal wave of change approaching, and the iPhone is only one of the many ripples on top: in the future, as we can easily (and soon - hopefully - cheaply) do all these things that used to require us to sit at our desks and stare at huge, ugly and noisy boxes that were connected with cables, we will need to learn how to manage our attention more than anything else. More than money, more than time. I guess maybe this could be compared to what happened back in the days when the telephone was first invented: everyone must have been busy making calls just because you could - until it became 'normal' and therefore less special, and the obsession with it would wane.

I am hoping that once we get used to having this enormous new potential and constantly morphing digital sandbox build-into everything we do and become available everywhere we are, maybe then we will start using it in a way that will not completely disconnect us from where we actually are, and from the conversations that go on around us, physically. Would I rather work on a blog post than talk to the person next to me, would I rather send a twitter update than tune into what's happening right in front of my nose?

Dealing with and managing those new possibilities will be the key challenge of the looming Always-On, Always-Open, Always-Connected lifestyle, and I am not sure we are ready for it, brain-wise, culture-wise, or social-wise - but then again, we were never ready for electricity, the car, radio, space travel or the printing press, either....?

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[drSpace]

This post is a good companion to Clive Thompson's article on the new tools for "ambient awareness" in today's NYTimes Magazine — "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html