Distracted
The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age
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Narrated by:
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Christine Carroll
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By:
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Maggie Jackson
About this listen
Do you text during family dinners or read e-mails during meetings? Does your spouse learn about your day from Facebook? Do you get news about the world by scanning online headlines while also doing something else?
Welcome to the land of distraction. Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. Our attention is scattered among the beeps and pings of a push-button world. We are less and less able to pause, reflect, and deeply connect.
In Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively, or cultivate meaningful relationships. Jackson warns of what can happen when we lose our ability to sustain focus and erode our capacity for deep attention - the building blocks of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. The implications for a healthy society are stark. Societal ADD will adversely affect parenting, marriages, personal safety, education, and even democracy. And yet we can recover our powers of focus through a renaissance of attention. Neuroscience is just now decoding the workings of attention, with its three pillars of focus, awareness, and judgment, and revealing how these skills can be shaped and taught.
In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its losses, Jackson offers us a compelling wake-up call, an adventure story, and reasons for hope. Put down your smart phone and prepare for an eye-opening journey. We can and must learn to focus attention in this Twitter culture.
©2009 Maggie Jackson (P)2010 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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An Anthropologist on Mars
- Seven Paradoxical Tales
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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To these seven narratives of neurological disorder Dr. Sacks brings the same humanity, poetic observation, and infectious sense of wonder that are apparent in his bestsellers Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. These men, women, and one extraordinary child emerge as brilliantly adaptive personalities, whose conditions have not so much debilitated them as ushered them into another reality.
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SACKS IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY !!
- By Jeff on 09-22-13
By: Oliver Sacks
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Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded)
- 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
- By: John Medina
- Narrated by: John Medina
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science.
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Dear Publishers . . .
- By Bekah on 04-06-17
By: John Medina
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A Mind at Play
- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
- By Bonny on 05-08-18
By: Rob Goodman, and others
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Before You Know It
- The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do
- By: John Bargh PhD
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has been responsible for the revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research that informed best sellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said "will be the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past 20 years", Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
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Political jab
- By Brad on 10-20-17
By: John Bargh PhD
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The Hidden Habits of Genius
- Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness
- By: Craig Wright
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What is genius? The word evokes iconic figures like Einstein, Beethoven, Picasso, and Steve Jobs, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet Beethoven could not multiply. Picasso couldn’t pass a fourth grade math test. And Jobs left high school with a 2.65 GPA. The Hidden Habits of Genius explores the meaning of this contested term, and the unexpected motivations of those we have dubbed "genius" throughout history, from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk.
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Click-bait title, minimal substance inside
- By James S. on 11-27-20
By: Craig Wright
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The Life We're Looking For
- Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World
- By: Andy Crouch
- Narrated by: Andy Crouch
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Our greatest need is to be recognized—to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we’ve displaced that need with the ease of technology. We’ve dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.
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Way too much scripture
- By Lee Nettles on 05-11-22
By: Andy Crouch
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The Importance of Being Little
- What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups
- By: Erika Christakis
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A bold challenge to the conventional wisdom about early childhood, with a pragmatic program to encourage parents and teachers to rethink how and where young children learn best by taking the child's eye view of the learning environment.
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Points out many problems; offers no real solution
- By K. Lynn on 08-06-18
By: Erika Christakis
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The Plateau Effect
- Getting From Stuck to Success
- By: Bob Sullivan, Hugh Thompson
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Plateau Effect is a powerful law of nature that affects everyone. Learn to identify plateaus and break through any stagnancy in your life - from diet and exercise, to work, to relationships. The Plateau Effect shows how athletes, scientists, therapists, companies, and musicians around the world are learning to break through their plateau - to turn off the forces that cause people to “get used to” things - and turn on human potential and happiness in ways that seemed impossible.
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Heath
- By Oliver Nielsen on 07-22-13
By: Bob Sullivan, and others
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In Pursuit of Elegance
- Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing
- By: Matthew E. May
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In this thought-provoking exploration, Matthew May defines elegance as the elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power, and pinpoints the four key elements that characterize it: seduction, subtraction, symmetry, and sustainability. In a story-driven narrative that sheds light on the need for elegance in design, engineering, physics, art, urban planning, sports, and work, May offers a surprising array of stories that illustrate why what's "not there" often matters more than what is.
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I love elegance, but this book isn't elegant
- By Oliver Nielsen on 06-26-11
By: Matthew E. May
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Seeing Voices
- A Journey Into the World of the Deaf
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect - a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well.
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A Rich Experience
- By Douglas on 11-27-12
By: Oliver Sacks
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The Geography of Genius
- A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley
- By: Eric Weiner
- Narrated by: Eric Weiner
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.
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Very, very disappointing
- By Tamara Greer on 06-08-16
By: Eric Weiner
What listeners say about Distracted
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- cal bay guy
- 11-21-14
some brilliant insights buried in wandering story
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Ms. Jackson begins with some bold and startling claims, shows us a brief glimpse of some intellectual gem level observations, then gets lost in a series of meandering narratives, only a few of which seem to be connected to her original thesis. Reads too much like a collection of magazine articles lacking structure overall. The vocal narration, while professional and well produced, is for this listener far too "chirpy". Its a mismatch of big, profound thesis against a voice much better suited to much lighter subjects. I found this jarring and almost undermining the seriousness of the content.
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Overall
- Sqwirly Girl
- 06-24-11
I endured it...
The author has done her homework. She presents many references worthy of tracking down, but for me it was too broad and over-written. Too many topics, too many references, and too much overly descriptive language made it a taxing example of overchievement.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rahul
- 09-01-16
Horrible
Never gets to the point. She just keeps rambling random things until you force your attention out
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Overall
- Jen Fornetti
- 09-29-10
Use ONLY as a Strong Sedative
I'm not sure which was worse: the frequent mispronunciations and automated telephone operator voice of the narrator or the intellectually vapid contentions of the author. It sounds like a mediocre master's thesis, and the author fails to make a strong case for this work's conceit--that the distractions of modern technological life are leading to a new "dark age." While there's no enlightenment to be found here, the book would likely serve as a sleep aid to those who don't respond to strong sedatives.
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3 people found this helpful