At least in the book’s introduction, Jackson makes her argument clear: with the eroding of attention and human dedication to detail and nuance, we could be heading for another dark ages. The definition of “dark ages” is extremely loosey-goosey and probably more historically normative than any academic would prefer - but hey! It sells. To be fair, in her explanation she does make the correct observation that technical advancement is not equivalent to intellectual Enlightenment.
At a swift 327 pages with footnotes, it seems like there are sections of Distracted that got left out of the book. For one, Jackson spends no time addressing how the rise of unprecedented access to information has actually helped the advancement of knowledge. People now have access to information that years ago would be impossible, however fragmented. Jackson also makes a case that computer files and hard drives wear out, and that information could be lost on a scale of Alexandria. She doesn’t realize that the ability to communicate, transfer, and copy information has never been stronger.
But perhaps the most glaring omission in a book full of the social effects of A.D.D. culture is a section on the political effects of such a development. One chapter of the book lazily applies Michel Foucault’s theory of the Panopticon as an explanation of the erosion of trust in society. Not only is that reasoning (considering more access to information actually builds trust), but she also brazenly skips over the ability of politics to manipulate and distort knowledge to whatever it pleases, no matter how inaccurate. The politics of manipulation is a topic that would not pander to Jackson’s core audience, which perhaps explains why she skipped it over. How could a mother who seriously believes the chain email she received about Obama being a secret Muslim be told that she’s been manipulated by a power structure?
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