[Christina Florkowski]

What a great conversation today with Manuela. We were able to follow-up on Iain’s Q&A on Thursday and even spoke about conversation itself. Manuela noted the importance of silence in a conversation which resonated deeply with me. The absence of silence (in my experience) can indicate that participants are largely reacting (associatively) rather than responding to each other. With her hands, Manuela mimicked perfectly the superficiality of a ping pong-style conversation. And what can the silence bring? An opening for something larger to enter the conversation. Thank you, Manuela!

And there was much, much more. Too much to try to summarize. But I promised I would share some links, so here goes.

A friend recently shared a New Yorker article written by Nathan Heller. While the topic of attention is of interest to me, I found the article written as if to blur the line between fact and fiction, and maybe even a bit manipulative. Still, a sense that maybe there is something here.

There is this quote in the article:

Catherine L. Hansen, an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo (snip) “When I look at the world, I feel that something is being lost or actively undermined,” she told me. “Sometimes it feels like attention. Sometimes it feels like imagination. Sometimes it feels like”—she thought for a moment—“that thing you wanted when you became an English major, that sort of half-dreamed, half-real thing you thought you were going to be. Whatever that is: it’s under attack.”>>

(My response to Manuela continued in the next reply.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/the-battle-for-attention

newyorker.com

The Battle for Attention

How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?