We all know that 18 is based on averages and that until recently the threshold for some rights was 21. Kids at 18 don't seem as mature as they were a few generations ago, with their ability to reason crippled by desperately short attention spans. We didn't have computer games or channel-surfing in the 1960s. For example I would say that …
We all know that 18 is based on averages and that until recently the threshold for some rights was 21. Kids at 18 don't seem as mature as they were a few generations ago, with their ability to reason crippled by desperately short attention spans. We didn't have computer games or channel-surfing in the 1960s.
For example I would say that anyone who starts smoking has shown an indisputable inability to run his own life. I don't care how old he is.
"ability to reason crippled by desperately short attention spans"
A huge issue. Are the members of society victims in the face of purposeful shortening of attention span to maximize exposure to advertising in the digital world? Perpetually toddlers who drop a toy at the sight of another toy.
Could be, but I try to never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Where it really scares me is how few people can read a book, or even a short document, or hw brief a period of dead air leads someone to say "gotta go, things to do," which is horseshit, it's just about getting back to the phone or the TV and smiling at it.
I don't recall if I've mentioned it here before. One year as I reviewed one of my daughter's reading lists, I noticed that a number of books dear to me in my youth were struck out. I went to the parent meet the teacher event and asked about it. She said that those books had Cliff's Notes. She wanted her students to read books, not summaries. Sacrificing good books to achieve that was her reason. What happened to a love for reading?
Since I started doing technical writing in 1993 I've had to shorten paragraphs and use more bullet lists. Half the software management fads like agile and scrum are founded on deprecating documentation because so many can't read a full page and hardly anyone can write.
Years ago, a mentor advised me to put an executive summary at the beginning of my multi-page technical reports because few managers would read the whole thing, even engineering managers. There was some justification for that.
We all know that 18 is based on averages and that until recently the threshold for some rights was 21. Kids at 18 don't seem as mature as they were a few generations ago, with their ability to reason crippled by desperately short attention spans. We didn't have computer games or channel-surfing in the 1960s.
For example I would say that anyone who starts smoking has shown an indisputable inability to run his own life. I don't care how old he is.
"ability to reason crippled by desperately short attention spans"
A huge issue. Are the members of society victims in the face of purposeful shortening of attention span to maximize exposure to advertising in the digital world? Perpetually toddlers who drop a toy at the sight of another toy.
Could be, but I try to never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Where it really scares me is how few people can read a book, or even a short document, or hw brief a period of dead air leads someone to say "gotta go, things to do," which is horseshit, it's just about getting back to the phone or the TV and smiling at it.
I don't recall if I've mentioned it here before. One year as I reviewed one of my daughter's reading lists, I noticed that a number of books dear to me in my youth were struck out. I went to the parent meet the teacher event and asked about it. She said that those books had Cliff's Notes. She wanted her students to read books, not summaries. Sacrificing good books to achieve that was her reason. What happened to a love for reading?
What happened was shortened attention spans.
Since I started doing technical writing in 1993 I've had to shorten paragraphs and use more bullet lists. Half the software management fads like agile and scrum are founded on deprecating documentation because so many can't read a full page and hardly anyone can write.
I read more than ever.
Years ago, a mentor advised me to put an executive summary at the beginning of my multi-page technical reports because few managers would read the whole thing, even engineering managers. There was some justification for that.
Once I put a line into a document right in the middle of a paragraph:
"when Johnny comes marching home again hurrah hurrah when Johnny comes"
Nobody remarked.
Most managers are too self-important for menial things like details.
You have more nerve than me and/or greater power of prediction.
This was not the regulatory submission I wrote to the FDA