Hello Habrites! We decided that it was right not only to sell books, but also to share with them. The review of the books itself was . In the post itself, an excerpt from "Attention Deficit Disorder in Geeks" and the book itself.
The main idea of the book extremely simple and yet very strange. What would happen if, during the North-South Civil War, the South was equipped with a whole bunch of AK-47s? To put the content of the entire book in short, they would have won. And it's easy! The author, Harry Turtledove, chose not to use time travel and other sci-fi favorites; he just writes like this: “Hurrah! The South has won! ABOUT! And what are they going to do with all this slavery now?
I'm sure people interested in the North-South Civil War will enjoy this book, but it's not at all suitable for those who, like me, suffer from Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. While reading, this harmless trait of mine manifested itself in full every time it became clear that a detailed description of the lifestyle or moral principles of those days in the conditions of an alternative scenario of the Civil War would follow ... And now I'm already falling asleep ... ZzZzZzzZZzz.
In fact, "The Weapons of the South" is a pleasant read, nevertheless, I repeatedly scrolled forward: "Okay, everything is clear. How long will this chapter last? As I neared the end of the book, it became clear that the time travelers coming from the future would no longer show up and reconcile North and South with some miraculous futuristic gadget. Eh... I was disappointed. Yes. Exactly! Of course, I'm glad that President Lee learned his lesson and began to abolish slavery himself, but ... where are the lasers? I am begging you…
Hey people! I'm a geek! I need a fast-paced plot, expressed in short, concise and energetic phrases. Give me Copeland, give me Calvin and Hobbs, give me Asimov, give me Watchmen. I need stories like this because I suffer terribly from Geek Attention Deficit Disorder.
If you haven't closed this book yet, then you, too, are suffering from some form of Geek Attention Deficit Disorder or some other similar mental disorder. Let's check it out!
Put the book down right now, get up and go to your desk. How many different things did you do the last time you were here? Personally, I had Slack messenger open, I listened to music from Spotify, then I was logged into several shared files from different teams, I had Chrome open with three tabs, where I watched trading on E * TRADE, adjusted WordPress server and read about weekend box office box office returns. And that is not all! I had iMessage and Tweetbot open, from which information about the fresh and exceptionally successful cookies of my friends flowed joyfully, there were also two windows open, where I fixed my thoughts on the latest integration in the form of various task lists. Yes! I'm going to rewrite this chapter again!
Folks, this is not multitasking. This is a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. I am generally not able to work at a computer until I have at least five tasks at the same time. If you count about as many different things in yourself as I do, then you probably suffer from this Syndrome too. This absolutely exceptional Syndrome!
Diagnosis "Geek"
My mom was the first to diagnose me with Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. This was in the late 90s. One day she brought me dinner to my room (I'm a geek), where I happily typed something to my friends in some primitive chat on my IBM XT (I'm a super geek), listened to music (most likely Flock of Seagulls, I geek level ++) and watched "Back to the Future" with the sound turned off (true geeeee!). Mom commented on what was happening like this: “How can you focus your attention on something when all this is happening to you at the same time?” I told her, “Mom, I won’t be able to concentrate if I don’t have all this noise around me!”
Whether or not you have Geek Attention Deficit Disorder in your life and how severe it is depends on how you deal with the avalanche of information that comes to you through all channels to satisfy your powerful thirst for new technologies. Most likely you have three options:
1. "You are logged out." You don't have a TV and you probably don't read this chapter at all.
2. You receive content in moderation. When I ask you to count how many windows you have open on your desktop, you either say, “One. My email client to read my inbox, or set yourself a reminder to count the windows after reading this chapter. Most likely, you have a daily planner that you can reach with your hand from where you are currently sitting.
3. You get content "like a hose." Browser tab, messenger tab, all day music and TWITTER TWITTER TWITTER. Geek Attention Deficit Disorder! Nice to meet you!
The presence of Geek Attention Deficit Disorder in your friends is also quite easy to check. Here's a simple test: ask your friend for permission to sit down at his computer and start clearing out the trash on his desktop. Move the icon here, resize the window there. If your friend calmly watches you poking around on his desktop, then most likely he does not have Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. But if he scratches his head anxiously and gets nervous when you move the icon 12 pixels to the right, then the Geek's Attention Deficit Disorder is clearly living here. In any case, keep your hands off his computer!
Context switching
You might think that the core competency behind Geek Attention Deficit Disorder is multitasking, and it's true. Geek Attention Deficit Disorder sufferers are remarkably multitaskers, but that's not their primary ability. Their main ability is the ability to switch content.
The idea of a context switch is the key to understanding Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. This is a pretty simple concept. To focus on something, you need to spend some time and some energy to get your brain into the right mental state. Think about how you usually read the New York Times on Saturday mornings. You have your coffee, your comfy pajamas, your couch, and you instantly understand what it says, whatever it is. This is your context.
Now imagine that in the middle of the article you are reading, I snatch the newspaper out of your hands and turn on CNN, where, completely by chance, there is a report about the same thing that you just read about.
What? Crap! What happened now?
You have just experienced a context switch. It wasn't particularly horrifying because the same story was on TV that you read about in the newspaper. It was just a different medium, the TV talking heads and the annoying news line at the bottom of the screen.
Still, it's annoying, right? Forget why I yanked the newspaper out of your hand. Now I'm talking about a mental shift from the process of reading to the process of viewing. This switch usually takes time. You need time for this, but the average carrier of the Geek Attention Deficit Disorder will simply note the context switch to himself, and that’s it. In fact, there is a high probability that right at this second he is digesting all of today's news coming to him from various random channels.
A carrier of Geek Attention Deficit Disorder differs from other people in that his context switching is imperceptible. The mental muscle that leads to context switching is very well developed in a geek, because he switches his attention all his life between different unrelated streams of data, trying to make sense of the enormous amount of information noise in order to hear what is important to him.
Anyone can multitask. But carriers of Geek Attention Deficit Disorder do it surprisingly well. They are engaged in an endless quest for high-speed information acquisition and processing.
Using Geek Attention Deficit Disorder Effectively
I write about Geek Attention Deficit Disorder as if it were a hallmark of information-obsessed freaks...in fact, it is. How else can you cope with a world in which there is constant pressure from the media? You become very adept at controlling the flow of information. Here I have even more good news for you.
- People who are not affected by Geek Attention Deficit Disorder believe that people with this syndrome cannot focus their attention because (look at us!) Their attention is scattered. Please stop clicking on different devices! I'm starting to get headaches from you. This is not true! Carriers of Geek Attention Deficit Disorder have an amazing ability to focus their attention on what they themselves have chosen as the focus of their attention. Although this is certainly not our permanent and natural state, and (yes!) sometimes it takes us longer than other people to get into the Zone (more on the Zone in chapter 36), but when we are there, then … Wow! Wow!
- The Internet is made for those with Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. Whether it's the amazing brief bursts of information that burst out of all your many news feeds, or the exponentially growing number of applications that just want to grab a "bit" of your time, in both cases the Internet knows about the existence of Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. He knows that any good website and any good application can be designed to answer not the question "Do you want to know anything?" but the question "How long can I have your attention?"
- Geek Attention Deficit Disorder can have a positive impact on your career. Have you ever worked in a startup? Ever released software? What are the last weeks leading up to a product launch like? We call them "fire drills" because everyone is running around in circles like crazy and doing all sorts of messy and thoughtless shit. In a situation like this, Geek Attention Deficit Disorder becomes an ideal handicap because it reduces the energy cost of context switching.
- If the building you are working in is on fire, run and find a person with Attention Deficit Disorder on your floor. Not only will he tell you where the emergency exits are, he will most likely give you some useful tips on how to avoid smoke inhalation, as well as provide a vast array of data on the likelihood of surviving fires in multi-story buildings. How is it even possible that this junior software engineer could know all this? Who knows... He may have read this on Wikipedia two years ago. Or maybe one of his close virtual friends from New York is a firefighter. What does it matter now? It could save your life or, more likely, provide you with a lot of useful facts before you both get fried like chips.
Negative sides
I'm talking about Geek Attention Deficit Disorder as some cute pink flaw. However, it also has negative sides.
First, identifying your personal mode of assimilation of the world around you is a huge job, and (sorry!) you will definitely lose some information. It will annoy you, but at the same time it will stimulate you every second to search for "your next great thing."
Secondly, you will often appear to others as a know-it-all. Try not to be a know-it-all. In fact, most people do not know all this random useless info, all this various news, current events, little-known facts and complex mathematical formulas. And these people are quite happy without them. Just because you're "brimming" with fresh and great information doesn't mean everyone wants to hear it.
You will constantly lack patience when interacting with those who have chosen a different lifestyle - different from the lifestyle of a Geek Attention Deficit Disorder. From time to time you will try to share your fractional wisdom with someone, to give up after about four minutes, when it becomes clear: “Damn it! They just don't get it!" There is a possibility that they understood everything, and you just suffer from a disease due to which your attention span is expressed in microseconds.
Whether you suffer from Geek Attention Deficit Disorder or not, there is one thing you need to understand. He won't get through! The generation that invented Geek Attention Deficit Disorder in the 80s and 90s of the last century has already been replaced by a generation that did not know the world without this syndrome, and they will be annoyed by something completely different.
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Source: habr.com