Don't know if people are going to hate me for the following wall of text, which is basically copy-pasted from my blog, but I'll post it anyway, because what's the harm?

With any luck, drawing attention to myself in a forum populated so heavily with intelligent people will increase the size of my viewership. Maybe?

Our world is quickly becoming more focused on activities that take less time to do more. We participate in so many different microactivities in one day, that we are actually changing our lifestyles. This change is mostly an internal one, such as how we handle everyday tasks.

In order to understand our society's evolution, and how technology has created a disparity between how we think and how we are taught, we need to first examine the evolution of that technology.

In the 20th century, we had a completely different culture than the one we have now. For starters, the World Wars had quite an impact on our industry. Women entered the workforce in great numbers to fill the void left by male draftees. After the wars, the workforce swelled to accommodate returning soldiers (and the G.I. Bill of Rights did nothing to slow this down). The Technological Revolution gave us many factory jobs for our new laborers, and so the idea of industry completely changed its shape.

We now had to figure out how to run everything efficiently, to feed the public's demands. Management evolved as a way of keeping all those employees in line, and workplace decorum became a focal point for corporations. A new kind of department was invented to keep track of Human Resources. Employees were viewed as mere resources, pieces of the great industrial machines.

I call this period of American history The Era of Mass Production, because it was then that we truly became the factory-based production titan that we (sort of) are today. Workers, instead of assembling whole products, became part of an assembly line, and worked on attaching one part of the whole. Over and over and over. There was very little autonomy in the workplace, and there was no way to improve personal efficiency. The algorithmic nature of the process meant that rewards and punishments helped employees focus on the goal.

In short, we became a society more focused than ever before on set goals. The workday was something like this: put this piece of machinery on; put this piece of machinery on; lunch; put this piece of machinery on; put this piece of machinery on; go home. Of course, I'm way oversimplifying; factories weren't the only components of this new industrial world. Obviously there were office jobs, farms, etc, but they all shared one thing in common; a necessary skill for all of these jobs was the ability to focus on completing one type of action (attach a wheel, file a memo, plow a field).

More and more, as the technology has ushered in greater efficiency, and thus greater amounts of leisure, people have been branching out. People try to get better at new things, and produce a lot of new ideas for products and services.

Corporations have been picking up on this trend and capitalizing on it, instituting groundbreaking company policies that encourage divergent thinking and promote employee empowerment. Many jobs afford people a lot of leeway, so as to create an atmosphere in which people are able to branch out, and try new techniques. Employees are encouraged to splinter their attention, and focus on many things at once. This recent philosophy is working well for many companies, implying that maybe, just maybe, we are better at producing under these "results-greater-than-process" conditions, where you can choose to do any number of different projects in whatever way you choose.

A software company called Atlassian has a special innovative technique called "FedEx Days." Once per quarter, employees have exactly 24 hours to come up with something, anything at all to do with their products, and work on it. They can do whatever they want, however they want, and with whomever they want, provided they show up to the meeting (party) at the end with something to show for their efforts.

Google has its famous "20 percent time," where employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on projects that interest them, free of micro-management from the higher-ups. This has produced many of Google's greatest hits. In fact, Google can trace 50% of its output to 20% of its time. Specifically, the 20% free time. Of course, this exact technique has predictably been appropriated by companies the world over, eager to improve their productivity.

A lot of companies, including the two mentioned above, are becoming more lax. Dress codes are abandoned, cubicles are deconstructed, and schedules are often completely obsolete. A workplace is now less of a hellhole to which you are shepherded everyday to complete a set of arbitrary objectives, and more of a social venue, where you can casually interact with peers while accomplishing what you deem important.

We have clearly evolved from the 20th century system of input/output, set-process, formal environments, to a technologically ordained workplace culture that engenders a spirit of creativity. With so much to fiddle with, we can't sit still long enough to endure those stifling meetings. We rely on our distracting and organizing devices, which is fine for our modern workplaces. We can channel our jumpy thought processes to the development of new technologies to make it easier to be jumpy.

In other words, the modern-day workforce allows and appreciates ADHD personalities. But if that type of mentality is becoming so prevalent and useful, how can it be reasonably called a disorder? It should be seen for what it truly is; an attention type, not an attention deficit (or a brain dysfunction, however minimal).

Thus, there are two types of attention patterns, each with their own purpose:

1. Linear Attention- The mentality that allows strict focus on a well-defined goal with little to no deviation from an established algorithm to achieve that goal. This type is able to tolerate repeated action and is suited to work that involves concentration and mental endurance.
2. Segmented Attention- The "jumpy" thought process that quickly shifts to a different activity after as little as a few minutes of occupation. Cognitively, the jumps are much shorter, allowing a wider scope of divergent functioning at the cost of focus on a set goal.

Obviously, this is more of a spectrum than a dichotomy. People will generally trend more toward one end, but people may even find themselves more Linear than Segmented at times, while experiencing frequent bursts of distractability at others, or vice versa. I myself feel like I am almost constantly Segmented, but occasionally I am overwhelmed with the Linear urge to see an objective through to the very end.

One more thing before I finally shut up: it is very possible that ADHD is a real thing, although not as we seem to think it is. It's not a person who refuses to sit still, and can't concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes. It's not a kid who acts out in class because s/he can't stand all the structure. And it's certainly not anywhere near as prevalent as 5% of all kids. It's something I would like to term "Fragmented Attention." It's a state of much greater Segmentation than normal SA-type people.

Fragmented Attention is not, like Segmented Attention, the tendency to avoid menial tasks or bore of them quickly. It's more like the inability to even engage in any task even remotely algorithmic. Instead of a train of thought than goes in all directions, often stumbling upon hidden subconscious treasures, a Fragmented thought process may be so bipolar that it can't explore any thought with depth before switching to another. This state would be incredibly debilitating, but I have yet to see or hear of a case that could possibly be this. Maybe it's my sleep deprived brain talking, but I'm just trying to get all the possibilities out there.

Don't worry; if you've read this far, you probably aren't Fragmented Attention.

TLDR

To match our growing technological capabilities, people are becoming more divergent thinkers; we are more capable of conceptualizing multiple solutions to a given situation. Companies are noticing this, and changing their structures to allow people to accept this role. We are becoming, as a society, more and more Segmented.

The two types of attention are Linear Attention, which allows focus and is good for repetitive and algorithmic tasks, and Segmented Attention, which allows lateral thinking, and is good for breaking new ground. Most people have influences of both in their personalities, but trend to act heavily in one way.

ADHD is not, as certain people seem to think, an epidemic. There may be a few select cases of individuals whose attentions are simply too broken up to properly function. However, just because someone has trouble sitting still does not mean they have Fragmented Attention.

Alright, discuss!