Small remote gatherings can beat huge in-person lectures as attention ecosystems

Evidence

So long as it takes place in good technological conditions, a teleconference with three people sitting at their desks doubtless provides a more convivial attention ecosystem than the physical co-presence of a teacher facing five hundred students in a lecture hall under sterile flourescent light. From which comes a third MAXIM OF SIZE APPROPRIATENESS: every kind of teaching determines an upper size-limit for a convivial environment, beyond which it becomes impossible to constitute a ‘unified system of reciprocal beings’. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 289

Categorization

• SEED: Problematic binary of in-person vs online collapses once you factor in group size — a piece on optimizing for size over medium.
• DEFINE: Introduces the third of the chapter’s named maxims, size appropriateness.
• XREF: connects to: The capitulation-versus-rigor teaching debate can be reframed by attention ecology — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 262; Attention ecology requires modulating between deep and distributed focus. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 425; Individual attention selection spontaneously aligns people into shared communities of sensibility — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 110 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The capitulation-versus-rigor teaching debate can be reframed by attention ecology #expands (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 262
• Attention ecology requires modulating between deep and distributed focus. #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 425
• Individual attention selection spontaneously aligns people into shared communities of sensibility #corroborates (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 110
• In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures #expands (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 154