Is there a chance that the generation being brought up is better equipped to turn shortened attention spans into a positive?
NE: It’s changing our consciousness. Maybe what this is going to do is tap into ways of using our intelligence, consciousness, sentience and morality in bigger ways. It’s exploding the universe in a good way.

JL: In general, a shortened attention span is never a good thing. It’s nice that these people have really good multi-tasking abilities and they get a job where they have to answer the phone, answer emails and run around really fast and that’s a skill they’ve built. But all the good things require a good, long ability to focus on something hard and solve it. That’s usually the people who have the most important positions in our society.

 

As tech changes, is that going to determine who’s successful?
JL: It might be the great divide. Who can continue to have a good attention span and who is brought down by all their distractions? That’s always who wins— the person who can study, focus and become really good at something.

NE: But then that person also has to be able to communicate in the language of the population. They have to be able to translate from that long thought into pieces that the common denominator would be attracted to, like Facebook.

JL: We still have a heavy curriculum at UMKC that people have to be able to go home for four hours, turn everything off, study and get through it. I don’t think that’s going away.

MO: I think it comes back to something that was said earlier: Discipline— how we compartmentalize our time. The interesting thing about focus is that I think technology and the accessed information empowers that focus greater than it ever has. You can learn anything you want to learn. The tools are out there and you can learn it fairly quickly just by taking advantage of the tools and technology that’s available.

NE: I was thinking of the definition of time and how technology has changed the concept of time. If you know that a certain moment in the day is the best time to concentrate or is the best time to have all your interactive, distractive, interruptive time. Time is also completely accessible through computers. You can go all the way back through history and still be in a room with someone. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s like time has suddenly blown out into this multi-level animal. Technology lets us dip in.

MO: Distractions have always been there. There was the water cooler, right?

NE: But time was more linear. Now it has many more dimensions. Because within one hour, what you can achieve by going into the past, crossing a geographic border, planning something ahead, putting that down, doing something you started earlier…your ability to go completely in and out of different timeframes is new.

MO: It’s evolving. Everything is evolutionary.

NE: Yes, and becoming more complex.

 

If I asked each of you to look forward, what does the future in your fields look like? Do they exist and in what form?
JL: If the type of animation we do right now becomes so straightforward that people aren’t willing to pay for it anymore, we would have to move on to something that’s hard enough that people need help doing it. We’re always watching that and moving onto the harder things and moving on from the things that have become too simple.

MO: We’re similar from a marketing perspective. What doesn’t change is storytelling from a marketing perspective, helping people understand their company, their product, their services and the connection of that to their customers. Customers are going to tell you more about that too with social media. The value for us will be helping people tell stories and how that gets delivered will continue to change and morph.

NE: I think that’s primal. Storytelling is innate to human beings. I don’t think we’re ever going to replace love and affection. I’m not going to stop cuddling my kids because the computer is more interesting. And I probably won’t stop painting, because I like the smell and the noise. I think advances in all the art forms  are remarkable and wonderful, but I don’t think we’ll ever move away from our need to tell stories and connect and feel.

JL: I agree that there are certain human universals that will continue. As Nicole said, storytelling and visual design and the visceral act of painting and drawing and that sort of thing flows through all of us. But I think in terms of business and making a living, we only get paid to do things that are hard for other people to do.

 

Any final words?
NE: I don’t ever want to feel as though we abdicate our sense of responsibility, in particular our ability to sustain the planet. If we don’t use our technology to deal with our responsibility to other people and the environment, none of the access, the money or the resources mean anything.

MO:
Beyond the technology, the two primordial fears that drive us all is the fear of not having enough and not being enough. If we don’t have the latest iPhone or whatever, it affects us. In order to get those things, you have to race to get more money. We are not rats, and life is not a race.

JL: I agree with the sentiment that you can’t allow technology to control you. You have to employ it where it helps you and push it out of your life where it doesn’t help you. For me, it’s been almost universally good in terms of connecting with more people in a more meaningful way. I like that human element and I think you have to bring that into it. We get to know more people in a human way, even though sometimes they’re very far from us. It’s nice to connect with people, whether they’re in Iran, Korea or Australia and discuss in very fast terms through email the things that are on their mind. You get to know people and you get to know the universal human condition in an important way, and that is that people often have the same emotions, thoughts and feelings. It’s been eye-opening for me, and I’ve enjoyed it as I’ve seen technology grow and seen interconnectedness become more intense.

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