Infographic creators have a 5 second attention span

Social Times yesterday posted an infographic (sponsored by AssistedLivingToday – slogan: ‘Information you can trust’). They introduce it by highlighting the most interesting statistic, which will be the focus of this blog post.

According to a fascinating infographic entitled “How Social Media is Ruining Our Minds,” over the course of the last ten years the average attention span has dropped from 12 minutes to a staggeringly short 5 seconds. As a person deeply ensconced in this connected age my experience shows this to be true. These days, we give a YouTube video just a few seconds to determine if it’s worth it. So what else does social media and technology affect within our minds?

This is the relevant section of the infographic:

Five second attention span

Shocking yes? Perhaps a little too shocking to be true?

Yup…

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Dreams

Quote

The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out before us. We see the same things every day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.

Profundity from an old xkcd.

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Live music: photographers’ rights in danger?

From the BBC Wales Music blog:

A photographer turns up at a venue somewhere in Britain in order to take shots of the new hot act, The Indubitable Idiots. She’s got a photo pass from The Idiots’ press company, but on arriving at the venue is presented with a piece of paper she must sign before being allowed in.

It’s in impenetrable legalese, but a quick read confirms that once the concert is over, she must hand raw and edited photos of the band to the management, that the copyright in the photos is no longer hers and that the band now own all that work. She can never use those photos ever again to make money.

Oh, and by the way, she also takes on her back all legal responsibility for future misuse of those photos.

This type of agreement, presented to legally-untrained photographers to sign at the last minute, might seem far-fetched, but it’s a phenomenon that has come to the fore in America and Britain over the past few years. It’s something that photographers are railing against, and which has seen the management of some of the world’s biggest artists actually back down in the face of complaints.

Live music: photographers’ rights in danger? – bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesmusic