[Earthworm] 6-6-2026 - Session 1 (focus: continuous partial attention)
No theme for today.
This follows the links accumulated from the initial discussion around information overload and attention fragmentation.
eat → digest → enrich → output
https://www.inoreader.com/
Tag: tool discovery
Looking for an RSS Reader to manage my overflowing tab list. This was suggested alongside Feedly--an old classic. It looks manufactured to flood my attention. Hard pass, but noting here for future reconsideration.
Next Up: NetNewsWire
https://lindastone.net/faq/
Tag: deep, digest, enrich
Wow that was more impactful than I thought.
One Sentence:
Remember to breathe, its not a crisis--slow down.
Reflection:
Coders and screen-users need the awareness and practice to prevent loss of embodiment. Musicians may be a good point of reference for embodied breathing practice. Screens may preempt more attention use than even regular consciousness--if the lizard brain is stimulated we're being taxed to the point of not breathing? (see also: orienting reflex)
Notes/Outline:
The FAQ from the woman who coined my state: "continuous partial attention". Different from multitasking, by motivational impulse. Multitask is doing multiple mundane tasks simulatiously. CPA is paying partial attention to live things continuously. To connect and be connected.
Scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, contacts, at any given moment. To be busy, connected, alive, recognized, to matter.
Goal: to not miss anything.
Always on, anywhere, anytime, any place. An artificial sense of constant crisis.
We are so accessible, we're inaccessible. CPA uses our dominant attention mode to contribute to feeling of overwhelm, over-stim, and a sense of being unfulfilled.
Not in the same attention 'era' at the same time (culturally).
Flow: attraction to an ideal, taking the expression of the ideal to an extreme, experiencing unintended and less than pleasant consequences, giving birth to and launching a new ideal while integrating the best of what came before.
Younger generations on the leading edge of thought for coming dominant attention paradigm.
Study of millenials in young ages (18-22) used comm tech in 'semi-sync' fashion. ex: text messaging.
See also: Matt Webb for HCI to ease CPA stress.
BREATHE. aka screen apnea. Screens take our subconscious attention to breathing, leading to shallower breath or holding of it.
All this insight preps for healthier tech use, for practice into it, like a musician "falling into the instrument", or a coder "getting into flow".