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I'm always excited to find a book that serves as a model for both research and writing. On the research side, this book reveals Orlean's obsessive approach, following lines of inquiry in various directions (the history of libraries and librarians, the LA library fire, the role of libraries in general, and more), but she's also pretty adept at turning a sentence and at a provocative litany.

This book is more a work of art history and criticism than it is one of attention. The author admits that the essays were separate works and that she eventually saw the through line of attention afterwards. I think the introduction offers an interesting answer to the current commonplaces about attention. It argues for a better and more complex account of attention, one that moves beyond depth vs. surface, or slow vs. fast. I am intrigued by that argument, and I think the body chapters have some interesting nuggets (especially chapter 2's discussion of "hybrid spectatorship" which considers the multiple audiences of a performance, those who are "present" and those who are not).

I am also sympathetic to this:

"'Distraction' is more of a moral judgement than a coherent description of how we look and think." (15)

As you're reading this book, it's difficult to remember that it was written in 1951. The technological "predictions" are interesting (bluetooth headphones, reality TV). But I think the most interesting portions are the discussions of the nature of books and media. Toward the end, we get a discussion of people as books (using their innate photographic memories to read/scan books that can later be retrieved from them), but this quotation from Faber around the middle of the book is probably my favorite moment...the texture of books, a texture that can be examined closely, and the rewards of that process of examination.

"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture. This book as pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail." (79)

I read this as part of a reading group on campus - the group included faculty and staff interested in how to approach teaching and learning in the wake of LLMs. The book is essentially just a manual of how to teach, in general. The idea is that good teaching is the best way to combat "cheating." A return to things like writing in class, paper-based assignments, oral exams, etc. are some of what's offered.

But the book also uses GPT at points, I guess as a way to incorporate the tool into the authors' process and to perform a way of adopting the tech in some way.

The book also makes a strange argument that it is up to instructors to protect "assessment integrity" and thus the value of degrees and institutions. This is not how I think about the problem at all, but maybe I'm crazy? I'm invested in providing interesting learning opportunities to students, but I don't see myself as being responsible for protecting the institution. And if students aren't into the opportunities I'm providing, that's mostly something I have to accept. They are spending time and money on an education - if they just want the credential, I think that's a huge bummer. But I see that as a social failure and not something I am responsible for trying to fix in the classroom.

I remain skeptical that these tools can do much of anything that is good, and I am 100% convinced they are damaging to those who are learning new skills.

Another book chosen by a student in my class for their extra credit assignment. Somehow, I've never read this.