SCATTERED ATTENTION AS AN EVOLUTIONARY ASSET

We have become not only used to interruption, we have become adept at it. We actually need it. We crave informational noise. What we currently identify as an endemic lack of focus — is it a pathological, detrimental condition, or is it simply a natural behavioral change that is reshaping how we produce, consume, and share information and ultimately how we form, store, and retrieve knowledge? Can there be knowledge without noise? What enables the distracted [distributed] mind to thrive in high-interference environments?

As a mode of knowledge and model for society

Deleuze and Guattari use the terms "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" (from Ancient Greek ῥίζωμα, rhízōma, "mass of roots") to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they oppose it to an arborescent (hierarchic, tree-like) conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.