Attention is in short supply

What do diamonds and attention have in common?
Scarcity.

Advances in communication technology have allowed us to accomplish so much on the go with easily shared and chronicled collective knowledge. According to a recent 2012 Pew Internet study, 85% of all American adults own a cell phone and 67% of those individuals regularly find themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts, or calls.¹

But unfortunately, being connected can have its serious disadvantages. For example, 40% of all American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger.² Being connected has also made us a bit paranoid; 39% of cell owners say that people they know have complained, because they don’t respond promptly to phone calls or text messages. ¹

Enter Google Glass, Google’s new digitally enhanced eyewear that allows users to take pictures, record video, perform searches, video conference, and pull information all from a screen in their glasses. Touted as the possible “smartphone killer”³, Google Glass puts us two steps ahead in how we learn and interact with the world but also put us two steps back with managing our limited attention reserve. Now, we don’t even have to take the ten to thirty seconds to pull out our phones, we can almost instantaneously communicate with the world.

Google has potentially gobbled up the last of human’s scare attention reserve. Imagine driving with someone who’s trying to figure out directions via Google Glass or trying to have a serious conversation with your spouse as they look up sports scores via Google Glass.

As with any major technology advancement, we adapt and learn to incorporate the technology in our everyday lives. Time will tell how Google Glass, and other disruptive communication technologies, will affect the way we interact with each other.

¹ http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Best-Worst-Mobile.aspx
² http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Teens-and-Distracted-Driving.aspx
³ http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/why-brands-are-already-looking-google-glass-and-why-apple-should-be-worried-147435