On the LIBR55m discussion board Dean posted a very interesting talk from Danah Boyd about Flow theory and information. Flow in a nutshell refers to a certain state of mind when a person is so absorbed in a skilled activity that they feel a different state ofconnection with the world. Think of a gardener carefully sowing seeds, a musician getting absorbed in a performance or an athlete enduring the length of a marathon.
I studied Flow last year in an information behaviour class with Heather O’Brien and found it very interesting. I reflected on the kinds of activities that bring about a sense of flow for me personally, from playing guitar to building things out of lego when I was young, to learning new ideas in my current studies. I feel that Joseph Campbell’s lesson to ‘follow our bliss’ plays a big role in bringing about states of flow. I also agree with Danah that it is a very delicate state of mind that can easily be disrupted. Unfortunately that has been the case for me this term at school and I’ve noticed a big difference in how well I’ve been able to do. I’ve been reflecting on why and why not I felt I was in a state of flow, and looking for ways to encourage it more for next term.
What hobbies or activities put you in a state of flow? Do you often find yourselves feeling flow while you’re at work? What about using social media? Is the search for information something that engages you this way as well? I think it does for me.
Danah certainly wasn’t feeling it during her presentation, as she later blogged about. Having watched it online, I think she was way too hard on herself about her delivery. She had a lot of great ideas, and she described them quite well aside from being a bit nervous (as if I’d be any less).
For her talk the conference organizers experimented with bringing the “back channel” to the front by letting the audience engage in a live twitter feed during her talk. This struck me as a bad idea right from the start, especially since her talk focused on the importance of attention, the priority of information and what kinds of information stimulate people the most.
Has anyone met a person who can truly attend to a lecture while also posting on and reading Twitter? I think someone should have raised their hand and said “I think this will be extremely distracting,” but for the sake of experimentation they tried it.
It seems almost too convenient that the “debacle” proved to be a perfect foil for Danah’s discussion of flow. Neither she nor her audience could enter that state because the two information streams were in a state of turbulence, badly conflicting with each other and dividing the attention of the audience while making the speaker feel uneasy.
Without the twitter stream I found the talk to be a completely different experience, one that I understood and quite enjoyed. This is worth keeping in mind! As we surf the web the quality of our reading experience will be a lot better if we carefully avoid other distractions and focus on the most important meanings.
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