Connectivity transmits unchanged information while sensitivity transforms its participants

Evidence

Writing about the circulation of information, Berardi makes a distinction that’s especially helpful here, between what he calls connectivity and sensitivity. Connectivity is the rapid circulation of information among compatible units—an example would be an article racking up a bunch of shares very quickly and unthinkingly by like-minded people on Facebook. With connectivity, you either are or are not compatible. Red or blue: check the box. In this transmission of information, the units don’t change, nor does the information. … Sensitivity, in contrast, involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that are themselves ambiguous—and this meeting, this sensing, requires and takes place in time. Not only that, due to the effort of sensing, the two entities might come away from the encounter a bit different than they went in. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 109

There is in fact a connection between 1) listening in the Deep Listening, bodily sense, and 2) listening, as in me understanding your perspective. Writing about the circulation of information, Berardi makes a distinction that’s especially helpful here, between what he calls connectivity and sensitivity. Connectivity is the rapid circulation of information among compatible units—an example would be an article racking up a bunch of shares very quickly and unthinkingly by like-minded people on Facebook. With connectivity, you either are or are not compatible. Red or blue: check the box. In this transmission of information, the units don’t change, nor does the information. … Sensitivity, in contrast, involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that are themselves ambiguous—and this meeting, this sensing, requires and takes place in time. Not only that, due to the effort of sensing, the two entities might come away from the encounter a bit different than they went in. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 109

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Berardi’s connectivity vs. sensitivity distinction, which is central to Odell’s redefinition of attention toward others.
• CANDY: The contrast (check-the-box red/blue vs. messy embodied encounter) is a quick, vivid way to explain a core attention-economy critique.
• XREF: Connectivity vs sensitivity parallels the mechanical sharing vs embodied encounter theme in ‘The Soundscape’ and Deep Listening books. — connects to: Media function as resonance vaults synchronizing affects, not channels for information. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 505; Media devices now function as talismans of connectivity rather than instruments of listening — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 52; Perpetual online connectivity produces numbness without genuine connection — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1246
• QUESTION: Worth checking whether Odell’s connectivity/sensitivity binary oversimplifies online contact that is genuinely transformative.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 109