Caption: This is an screenshot of a Mac dashboard, which is similar to the Cyfe dashboard. What distinguishes between both dashboards is that the Mac version displays "apps" instead of widgets. The difference is that the Mac version does not have apps that are content heavy. There are general apps that specialise in weather, finance, time and location - not so much to extent of showing social networks like Facebook or Twitter. The Mac dashboard is accessible as the user only has to press F3 on the keyboard to open it. It can be organised, rearranged and deleted according to the user. The user has the opportunity to become selective of the content he/she chooses to process on a daily basis.
Howard Rheingold, a pioneer of virtual online communities defines ‘infotention’ as a “type of digital literacy”. Digital literacy is the ability to locate, organise, understand, evaluate and analyse information using digital technology. In today’s context, Generation Y has a higher level of digital literacy than Generation X. Generation Y is aware of this ‘digital culture’ where technological devices such as laptops, iPads, android tablets and mobile phones control how information is distributed and govern how individuals use their time. When Generation Y access online media they use, in Rheingold’s terms, “the psycho-social-techno tools” to “find, direct, and manage streams of relevant information”. These ‘functions’ are developed and refined when individuals continuously use these tools. For e.g. on Facebook users are able to chat simultaneously while browsing profiles, playing games or uploading videos or photos. Facebook chat is situated on the bottom right hand corner of the website and the messages tab. The user is able to respond to information on the bottom hand corner, middle and top of the screen because Facebook enables opportunities for the user to explore information on its website while attending another activity located elsewhere. The Facebook app for Apple and Android devices allow the user to enter into cyberspace while watching TV or studying.
Generation Y is raised in a culture where they become participants and distributors of content. Twitter and Tumblr can also be connected to Facebook so information can shared between these three platforms. The Internet has become a playground of action where minds are required to adapt to a changing environment. In this case the online environment includes updates from the media, social networks and academia. Rhiengold proposed that for users to stay alert to media, they must have both a skill component and social component when dealing with information overload. This is where forms of infotention come in. Rheingold mentioned infotention includes putting together intelligence dashboards, new radars and information filters from online tools. These are what Rheingold describes as information literacy. The University of Idaho explains that information literacy is “the ability to identify what information is needed, understand how the information is organised, identify the best sources of information for a given need, locate those sources, evaluate those sources critically, and share that information”. These examples are commonly used as research techniques to assist in building upon methodology. The user has to make a decision to establish, adapt and employ attention in such online environments.
Society is surrounded by information that constantly grows and shifts into different formats. It is daunting for our minds to interact with four or five windows open at the same time in our computer screen. Since the human brain is attracted to content that appeal to their senses of sight and sound, seeing data scattered all over a computer screen will cause some disengagement. Because of this, our level of attention must increase in order to engage with the content displayed in these windows.
An example is a RSS feed. Cyfe is a data display oriented dashboard that contains sections of data that are separated into boxes that are called ‘widgets’. The content changes according to the time in which new information released. As seen in the video above, there is a Twitterfeed, Facebook pages, Alexa and Gmail widget. These widgets consist of data that are linked to a specific page. The user is able to select from a wide range of widgets which content to monitor and filter, and which RSS feed to import. By personally constructing information radars and rearranging knowledge dashboards, users can adjust the visual layout of the dashboard according to “attentional tactics”. Rheingold states, “mentally trained and technologically augmented infotention is about conjuring intelligent input”. A person who is technologically augmented can detect valuable information for their personal use. Taking the example of Cyfe, the user must first identify what information they want to consume, which widget will deliver the information to them, and how they will structure the data in the widgets to visually appeal to them. Rheingold informed the “external know-how about putting information detectors and filters together online” is what the process of organisation involves. It is necessary for the user to have attention literacies to create and use infotention filters as they are read and controlled through intelligence dashboards. These dashboards are constructed from smart RSS readers who make use of infotention filters to use for other services that are linked to RSS feeds such as blogs, YouTube and Flickr tags. Further, an individual’s process of organisation depends on their ability to multitask (when dealing with an information overload). On lifehacker.com, Leo Wildrich said people who multitask “are not being more productive – they just feel more emotionally satisfied from their work”. However is our ability to multitask determined by our ability to remain focused or is it dependent on our attention span? Rheingold states, “knowing what to pay attention to is a cognitive skill that steers and focuses the technical knowledge of how to find information worth your attention”. Lets refer to the Youtube video by the Transport for London below.
The video displays two groups of basketball players (one dressed in black, another dressed in white) throwing basketballs to each other. The viewer is told to watch the white team and count how many passes are made. Your eyes would be solely focused on the white team, barely noticing there is a moonwalking bear crossing the screen. It is difficult for the human mind to process active data that is susceptible to change. Each individual has a capacity to process information, however what distinguishes users between one another is their level of digital literacy. In the ‘awareness test’ video, the participant does not recognise the dancing bear after being commanded to shift their focus onto the white team. The user must use their cognitive, social and technological tool to understand the content presented to them. The individual may have to replay this video to identify the bear. According to statistics on ‘Statistic Brain’, the average attention span of a human in 2012 is eight seconds, which is one second lower than a gold fish, whereas in 2000 it was twelve seconds. What does this say about the human brain and infotention? Each individual relies on tools to transform information to become useable. The experience of using infotention tools, such as the RSS feed, varies. But what is shared as a commonality between humankind, is that each individual has, somewhat, a capacity to render their knowledge to process and select information for their benefit and consumption.
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