When Cathy Davidson and Duke University advocated giving free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics said the university was wasting their money. Yet when students in practically every discipline invented academic uses for the music players, sudden ly the idea could be seen in a new light—as an innovative way to turn learning on its head. This radical experiment is at the heart of Davidson’s inspiring new book. Using cutting-edge research on the brain, she shows how “attention blindness” has produced one of our society’s greatest challenges: while we’ve all acknowledged the great changes of the digital age, most of us still toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century. Davidson introduces us to visionaries whose groundbreaking ideas—from schools with curriculums built around video games to companies that train workers using virtual environments—will open the doors to new ways of working and learning. A lively hybrid of Thomas Friedman and Normal Doidge, Now You See It is a refreshingly optimistic argument for a bold embrace of our connected, collaborative future.
Notes
When Cathy Davidson and Duke University advocated giving free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics said the university was wasting their money. Yet when students in practically every discipline invented academic uses for the music players, sudden ly the idea could be seen in a new light—as an innovative way to turn learning on its head.
This radical experiment is at the heart of Davidson’s inspiring new book. Using cutting-edge research on the brain, she shows how “attention blindness” has produced one of our society’s greatest challenges: while we’ve all acknowledged the great changes of the digital age, most of us still toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century. Davidson introduces us to visionaries whose groundbreaking ideas—from schools with curriculums built around video games to companies that train workers using virtual environments—will open the doors to new ways of working and learning. A lively hybrid of Thomas Friedman and Normal Doidge, Now You See It is a refreshingly optimistic argument for a bold embrace of our connected, collaborative future.
Reviews
9 reviews
Now You See It starts where Malcolm Gladwell leaves off, showing how digital information will change our brains. Think Alvin Toffler meets Ray Kurzweil on Francis Crick’s front porch. We need this book.
Daniel LevitinJames McGill Professor of Neuroscience, McGill University and author of the New York Times bestsellers “This Is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs”
While the New York Times continually publishes articles on the detrimental effects of technology for our concentration, Davidson takes the technological bull by the horns and argues that concentration hasn’t gone downhill with the internet: we’re just operating with an outdated notion of attention, in the workplace and at home.
The book’s purpose and strength are in detailing the important lessons we can glean from the online world. Rather than focusing on how games such as World of Warcraft or the social-networking services of Twitter and Facebook change our brains, Davidson believes we should foster these newfound skills, building curricula around interactive multiplayer games and training workers using virtual environments.
In a chatty, enthusiastic style, the author takes us on a journey through contemporary classrooms and offices to describe how they are changing—or, according to her, should change. Among much else, we need to build schools and workplaces that match the demands of our multitasking brains. That means emphasizing “nonlinear thinking,” “social networks” and “crowdsourcing.” ..<em>Now You See It</em> is filled with instructive anecdotes and genuine insights.
A remarkable new book, <em>Now You See It . . . o</em>ffers a fresh and reassuring perspective on how to manage anxieties about the bewildering pace of technological change. . . . Her work is the most powerful yet to insist that we can and should manage the impact of these changes in our lives.
Davidson profiles workplaces that have thrown out the industrial age rule of command and control, of management as supervision rather than leadership and support, detailing how these employers achieve both high profits and high staff retention.<br>I’m so pleased that <em>Now You See It</em> came out of our academic world, written by someone who works within our system. Her critique of higher education is that of an insider who wants to reform and improve the system, not blow it up.
<em>Now You See It</em> shows how mind and technology can meet, with the latter becoming an extension of the mind – not simply a tool, but a mind tool. . . . Neatly presented in an accessible style, this account is peppered liberally with personal anecdotes and is laced with empirical evidence from psychological studies. Indeed, Davidson has taken great care in achieving this fine balance. <em>Now You See It</em> is humorous, poignant, entertaining, endearing, touching and challenging. It is a book I would happily recommend to anyone engaged in teaching at any level, because it aims both to comfort and to disrupt; it is devised to convince readers that the human mind is ready for the next quantum advance into our collective future, whatever that may be. It is certainly all-embracing in its scope, demonstrating how a sound knowledge of the many ways we can learn in new, media-rich environments might provide a better understanding of how individuals can attain their optimum potential.
As Ms. Davidson puts it: ‘Pundits may be asking if the Internet is bad for our children’s mental development, but the better question is whether the form of learning and knowledge-making we are instilling in our children is useful to their future.’ In her galvanic new book, “Now You See It,” Ms. Davidson asks, and ingeniously answers, that question. One of the nation’s great digital minds, she has written an immensely enjoyable omni-manifesto that’s officially about the brain science of attention. But the book also challenges nearly every assumption about American education. . . . As scholarly as “Now You See It” is — as rooted in field experience, as well as rigorous history, philosophy and science — this book about education happens to double as an optimistic, even thrilling, summer read. It supplies reasons for hope about the future. Take it to the beach. That much hope, plus that much scholarship, amounts to a distinctly unguilty pleasure.
Davidson has produced an exceptional and critically important book, one that is all-but-impossible to put down and likely to shape discussions for years to come.
