Maybe Japanese people have resisted the western degeneration in attention span and patience, and retain the ability to not have a seizure looking at a webpage with a modicum of information density. I've noticed this trend following very "busy" 1800s signs/newspapers/etc up to now. People back then weren't addicted to fast and easy dopamine and had the mental space to parse something with detail on it.
That's an interesting perspective. I've always seen it to be the opposite, particularly when playing many Japanese video games: signs everywhere, tons of over-emoting both verbal and physical, exaggerated everything, lots of noises, ridiculously large numbers that must be flashed all over, lots of visual flashing. Lots of particle/special effects. Just a ton of really inexpensive dopamine for retaining capture of low attention span.
Not that any of this is inherently wrong. I'm not judging it (and I often enjoy it). But I think there's a sufficiently strong example of the opposite in modern Japanese culture.
What's interesting is, I think, we're both describing "very high information density" but seeing it as a result of high attention span, or low attention span. Heh!
I'm not sure I agree with all of that: a notable difference between modern media and 1800s newsprint is the paper was very expensive then compared to more recently, so it was highly economical to cram everything onto fewer physical pages. Electronic media has essentially zero marginal costs for longer or less dense content.
The same goes for cheaper books (which still were not as cheap as modern mass-market books in PPP terms): narrow margins and crammed text. But as soon as you move up market to expensive books, the margins widen and the text lines open up. People still liked the aesthetic of open and airy, but it cost a lot.
Further more, for signs, you had to get everything on them. There was no Internet, no phones, no Yellow Pages, no CeeFax. Someone interested in your service would have to stand there and copy the relevant details into their pocket book.
On the other hand, I do very much detest the glossy websites where there are something like 20,000 vertical pixels of flashy content, but none of it useful. Just endless fluff, vagueries and calls-to-ill-defined-actions. 90% of people just want to know your opening hours, contact details and a price list (services) or menu (for food). And the delivery costs. Everything else is a waste of everyone's bandwidth until you have made those things front and centre.
I certainly don't get the feeling of a patient attention span whenever I've seen clips from Japanese TV where on top of the main action they have shining brightly-colored text and graphics popping up all over, scrolling banners, maybe a reaction cam cutting between multiple people hamming up their reactions to everything, etc.
Ah yes, the famous modern Japanese restrained design because they have longer attention span than ours. They wouldn't need flashy neon colours to keep engaged. That's some confirmation bias.
> I've noticed this trend following very "busy" 1800s signs/newspapers/etc up to now. People back then weren't addicted to fast and easy dopamine and had the mental space to parse something with detail on it.
I've recently been reading Amusing Ourselves to Death (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death), and it noted that in the 1800s America has a "literate" culture: people read a lot and had correspondingly longer attention spans. Apparently attending debates and lectures were a fairly common activity, and those went on for hours, with each side having plenty of time to express complete and complex thoughts, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debate...:
> Each debate lasted about three hours; one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, followed by a 90-minute response and a final 30-minute rejoinder by the first candidate. The candidates alternated speaking first. As the incumbent, Douglas spoke first in four of the debates....
> The debates took place between August and October 1858. Newspapers reported 12,000 in attendance at Ottawa,[7] 16,000 to 18,000 in Galesburg,[4] 15,000 in Freeport,[8] 12,000 in Quincy, and at the last one, in Alton, 5,000 to 10,000.[6] The debates near Illinois's borders (Freeport, Quincy, and Alton) drew large numbers of people from neighboring states.[9][full citation needed][10] A number travelled within Illinois to follow the debates.[7]
I have already linked it ( https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790.amp ), but attention span itself didn’t decrease, it’s not even an existing concept. Media producers just got better at maximizing our engagement with their content, and comparatively a plain old book will be boring to our brains. This thought actually did help me in that I can’t fall victim of “learned helplessness” here, just put that phone down and work on the thing you want. Focus modes are also very beneficial.
Nonetheless, interesting historical fact, thanks for sharing!
I'm pretty sure this is indeed a significant part of it. While watching the relevant video she says she gets "overwhelmed" by the old reddit layout because of the "amount of text" (which isn't even that much) and I really do have to wonder how these people even managed to live their lives before the age of the smartphone without suffering regular mental breakdowns every time they saw a newspaper. The future does not look good.
