In a recent Times Online article, Ben Macintyre writes about the death of the narrative at the hands of the internet. According to Macintyre, the fast-paced nature of the internet has made us unable to focus our attention in a sustained manner.
The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé.
Addicted to the BlackBerry, hectored and heckled by the next blog alert, web link or text message, we are in state of Continual Partial Attention, too bombarded by snippets and gobbets of information to focus on anything for very long. Microsoft researchers have found that someone distracted by an e-mail message alert takes an average of 24 minutes to return to the same level of concentration.
We crave plot, he continues, but the internet is not the forum for the long-form narrative–especially not when that next webpage is only a click away. The cell phone stories that have become extremely popular in Japan may herald the next narrative form–compressed, yes, but still containing characters and a narrative arc, “proof,” he says, “that the ancient need for narrative, hardwired into human nature, can sit comfortably with the wiring of the newest technology.”