Scholar to discuss ‘brain science of attention’ at Baker Institute Feb. 28

Author, “technopragmatist” and Duke University Professor Cathy Davidson will speak Feb. 28 at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy on her book about how attention affects the way modern society learns and thinks.

Cathy Davidson

Davidson, the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and former vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University, will speak on “Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn.” The lecture begins at noon in Baker Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility.

When Duke University gave free iPods to its freshman class in 2003, critics called it a waste of money. Yet when students found academic uses for the brand new music devices in virtually every discipline, the iPod experiment proved to be a classic example of the power of disruption — a way of refocusing attention to illuminate unseen possibilities.

Davidson, who was Duke’s vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at the time of the iPod experiment, sees this kind of innovation as the heart of a new collaborative, interactive learning that is ideal for students facing a changing global future. Using cutting-edge research on the brain and learning, Davidson shows how the phenomenon of “attention blindness” — in which people fail to perceive objects they are not specifically paying attention to — shapes people’s lives, and how it has led to one of the greatest problems of the moment. According to Davidson, although people email, blog, tweet and text as if by instinct, too many toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century, not the one in which they live. Davidson helps people to think in historical, theoretical, institutional and practical ways about how to thrive in the connected, global world they inhabit.

Davidson is the author of numerous books, including “Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn” and “The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.”

Rice faculty, staff and students who want to attend must RSVP by email (bipprsvp@rice.edu), by fax (713-348-5993) or on the Web at http://bakerinstitute.org/events/now-you-see-it-how-the-brain-science-of-attention-will-transform-the-way-we-live-work-and-learn. A webcast of the event can also be seen at this address.