Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science Will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st Century

There's an old aphorism that "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king." Cathy Davidson might well revamp that phrase to be "In the land of the attention blind, collaborators are king." And indeed, all of us ARE attention blind, as Davidson demonstrates in multiple ways throughout the book, since we pay attention to some things at the expense of others, often without even recognizing it. But while that insight itself isn't necessarily novel, Davidson's way of engaging with it often is. Rather than excoriate technology or youth culture or "reality TV" for compromising our attention, Davidson underscores the attention blindness is an inherent part of existence, positing it within a historic context stemming back to Socrates and positioning it as an opportunity to redefine the realities of our modern world, individually and collectively, to better reflect what we value and aspire to.From infancy on, we are socialized about what matters, in ways that are often invisible to us, as Davidson incisively and accessibly depicts through a "case study" of infant Andy. Attention blindness can not be avoided--no one's cognitive capacity can encompass everything--but we can be more conscious about what we choose to attend to, and Davidson provides many helpful tips and tools for so doing. Davidson wants learning to be a verb when it is too often a noun. And she advocates for the importance of unlearning, which may in fact be harder than learning yet is necessary to prepare us for future possibilities.While one of the frequent concerns about the digital world is that it isolates us behind screens-- scrolling through the Facebook postings of "friends" rather than spending face-to-face time with friends, and leading to increased isolation and egocentrism. Davidson underscores the degree to which technology can unite us and, by making possible unprecedented access to others, can enable us to collaborate in ways that overcome individual oversights through collectivity.She aptly notes that "multi-tasking" has become a prominent verb in modern life, and an equally prominent complaint, leading to a perpetual state of partial attention that many fear is at the expense of deep thought. Davidson reframes multitasking as being about distribution rather than distraction. Rather than think of continuous partial attention as a bane, we can consider it a boon in equipping us for flourishing in an increasingly digital world, and as an essential, adaptive mode for the twenty-first century in which everything links to everything else in an interconnected network of networks, providing access that is empowering and can lead to greater efficiencies, especially if we partner with others who compensate for what we miss in our partiality.Furthermore, she debunks the idea of mono-tasking as being a myth--our brains are inherently inquisitive. They crave activity and engagement, and in fact internal distractions supercede external during any given hour at work. An astonishing 80 percent of our neural energy is taken up not by external distractions at all but by the mind talking to itself. Even when we're engaged in reading a long book, our minds drift about 25% of time. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Davidson references a researcher who has found that more of the areas of the brain light up when a person is daydreaming than when the same person is engaged in a concentrated task. Remote parts of the brain "talk" to one another in those down times, and it's about twenty times more active than when it's being stimulated from outside, which is pretty positive. And, perhaps counterintuitively, she reveals that the brain uses far less energy when it's multitasking than if it's in a deep, meditative state.Overall Davidson neither valorizes nor vilifies the implications of the internet on attention but rather reminds us that the Internet is still in its adolescence--which explains its awkwardness!--and that most of us haven't figured out the best ways to engage in the digital world. She encourages us to consider new digital ways of thinking not as multitasking but multi-inspiring, as eliciting potentially creative disruption of usual thought patterns that can lead to new insights. Rather than resist or resent digital realities, she encourages us to relish them, providing a chance to re-envision school practices to equip young people for very different labor realities of the 21st century AND to re-envision work practices to increase effectiveness and satisfaction of workers while increasing productivity.The disconnect between our digital lives and our daily lives as they play out in school or work tends to be too stark, and perhaps at the root of increasing rates of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and the attention "deficits" most of us suffer from in some capacity and yet which Davidson astutely insinuates may be more about institutional rather than individual inadequacies.Promoting interdisciplinariness and cross-fertilizations of all kinds can help. Deepening and differentiating instruction and assessment beyond the standardized practices of yore can help. Being mindful of attention and distraction (a cue to consciousness!) and managing your time with intentionality (digital holidays!) can help. The Internet provides an unprecedented opportunity to think and work in a more networked way; the question is whether our institutions, and the entrenched thinking that can is willing to evolve in response to such opportunities.Davidson denaturalizes schooling by depicting how we came to have the schools we have, and how reflective they were of the values and needs of the Industrial Age in which they were created. Yet they have not evolved to reflect the Information Age in which we currently live or, better yet, the Age that lies ahead of us. Far from needing to preserve the status quo, there is all but uniform agreement that our schools need to evolve, and yet an enormous inability to do so systemically.Is another world possible? One of the things that has been most effective about the current Occupy Wall Street movement is the degree to which it's shaken the public--and The Establishment --from our relative attention blindness and tacit acceptance of the vast, unacceptable inequalities. Making Now You See It required reading for leaders and educators from kindergarten through college would be a great way to agitate against inertia in education, and might just inspire an Occupy Education movement....Some thoughts and questions on my mind after reading Now You See It.*How can we capitalize on what works about, say, game design and incorporate effective such as instant and continuing feedback and progressive challenges into spheres of formal learning?*Much as George Bush infamously noted that he wouldn't want to hire anyone for his administration who didn't cross-train (if only he'd been unwilling to hire anyone who didn't have a brain, or a heart), Davidson urges that we would do well to embrace cognitive cross-training--interconnected neural training activities that help minimize attention blindness, assist in multitasking, and promote collaboration by difference.*Encouraging, rather than discouraging, mind-wandering might turn out to be exactly what we need to encourage more of in order to accomplish the best work in a global, multimedia digital age.*Despite well-known recommendations of repetition being the key to learning (which is certainly an important element), Davidson underscores that "what surprises the brain is what allows for learning. Incongruity, disruption, and disorientation may well turn out to be the most inspiring, creative, and productive forces one can add to the workplace." Figuring out how to tap into these productively within classrooms is challenging, but worth exploring further.I recommend Now You See It to anyone concerned about the future of learning--and the future overall!

Overall, this book is a must read for all teachers interested in what should count as education in the 21st Century. It argues that the brain is like the distributed network that is the internet, and therefore, the internet should be shaping the ways in which education should move to an emphasis on multi-tasking, crowd-sourcing, etc. I do think all educators should worry about how to prepare students for tomorrow. But is the brain like the internet? Davidson suffered from learning disabilities, but was not so labeled, and thus,she is eager to redefine such "disabilities" as abilities. She makes this claim by arguing that the mind's natural mode is to wander off course, and that attention blindness, another name for attention deficit, is actually what makes our minds capable of greatness. This is to assume that we can control our attention blindness. She also submits that "sharing perspectives" (5) will enable us to see the whole picture. Yes, such blindness is what enables concentration to begin with. Nonetheless that does not mean that our blindnesses are capable of being controlled. Nor does that mean that sharing can be a solution because there is only so much sharing we can attend to. She also assumes that our brains are built for multi-tasking. That may be true, but clearly there are limits to what we can do: hence the prohibitions against texting and driving, for instance. Her claim that the brain is like the internet needs to account for the reasons why critics like Jerry Fodor have moved away from computational theories of the brain. Does the internet work serially like our brains supposedly do? Since her job is to innovate pedagogically, and since technology is a key means of innovation, I worry that she has uncritically signed on to metaphors of the brain that advance her overall causes.It remains to be seen what the science of attention will actually teach us. Within attention studies, there is a growing interest in effortless attention. Although people assumed that greater effort would yield greater attention, the most productive attention turns out to be of the effortless kind. If attention is effortless--people used to worry that it was unwilled--then what kinds of control can we have over it? Although we perceive it as effortless, is that in fact true? One might explore how much glucose is consumed in allegedly effortless attention compared to concentrated attention. If the best attention is effortless, does it really mean that when students wander off task it is really the fault of a bad teacher? All Davidson has done here is to move the problem from the student--attention deficit makes the student someone to be medicated--to the teacher--now poor attention is the fault of the teacher who does not turn to the internet to rethink his teaching. What the science of attention studiously avoids is the unconscious.A lot about education does need rethinking. But Davidson needs to rethink the extent to which the internet achieves a breakdown of old hierarchies. Yes, users have more control over content. What about the digital divide, the gap between schools like Duke that have the Gates Foundation to hand over 10 million dollars to explore technology and education and others? Does a decrease in hierarchy mean that hierarchy no longer exists? It does not help make her case that a lot of her examples are things no real educator truly believes in like multiple choice tests or intelligence tests.Ultimately is attention deficit simply an unappreciated form of multi-tasking? Wishful thinking abounds here. Nonetheless, the book is an eloquent call to rethink the work of education in light of web 2.0.

Hmm, I am not sure that the evidence in this book stands up to scrutiny. It has a somewhat vague hypothesis. The title simply isn't addressed in a satisfying way.

Anybody with questions about learning in the digital age will find answers and further questioning. If you have never come across the issue of attention blindness and its causes and consequences, you must read this book.

A very approach to problem solving. This should appeal to all those who work in the field of problem analysis and solving.

I bought this book because it was recommended in a course (learning how-to learn on coursera) and really enjoyed it. I feel like I learned a lot and it's helped me reframe my opinion about the digital transformation of society, now I feel more hopeful in a way but also overwhelmed by the amount of change still needed... and how slow that change is happening. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the issues surrounding the transformation of society in this digital age.

Material com conteúdo bom e que que atendeu completamente as minhas expectativas. Recomendável para quem deseja aumentar a qualidade de suas aulas.