Linda Stone is one of the most interesting and serious researchers on the human side of HCI (human-computer interaction).   If I can sum up her work, it is in being concerned with the way (to quote Mike Wesch) the computer uses us.   That is, as we spend so much of our time online, what cognitive and physiological changes might be happening to us?   Those are key questions.

In the first half of the book I'm writing on the deep structue of thinking for the Information Age, I propose a new model of mind which can serve us better in this digital moment than the models we've inherited from the nineteenth century's machine age working brain.   The second half of the book looks at very practical applications of the new model in everyday life and, for this part, I'm talking with some of the smartest people in the world who have not only envisioned human-computer interaction but have put it into practice, shaped it, learned from it and also informed it.  Today, I have the opporunity to meet and talk with Linda.

Way back in 1998, she was the person who diagnosed the kind of distractedness of our digital era with a brilliant phrase, "continuous partial attention."  Her argument was that, with so many distractions in our life, we are constantly pay a little bit of attention to everything, but then are also paying attention to other things.  She's done deep research on how we operate with continuous partial attention.   And I'm looking forward to our conversation today because I think there are also forms of very deep attention that come from screen-interaction too. 

In fact, in her new work, that came out in 2008, Stone has been studing what she calls, with another great descriptor, "email apnea."  She has found that when people are answering their emails, especially on handhelds, they concentrate so intently that they actually stop breathing.   This isn't good for you, adds to stress, so she advises people to be aware of this tendency and just take time to b-r-e-a-t-h-e.   I'm betting there is gamer apnea too.  

What I love so much about Linda Stone's work is it never stops with the obvious.  Her research is utterly grounded and yet her insights soar.   She is never content with the obvious conclusion from empirical research but twists and turns the conclusions so that they can be about meditation or pharmacology or loneliness or disability--and she understands that all of that is "technology."  She is profoundly aware of the "human" in HCI and that technology is never simply pipes and tubes, chips and bandwidth, but is about the social interactions it enables or confounds, about the way new technologies change existing relationships, change our bodies and our minds, and sometimes, alas, our souls too. 

in other words she "gets it."  I read her work, I listen to her on NPR, and I value her insights into all the complexities of our Internet age.  Below, I've cut and pasted the Wikipedia bio for Linda Stone.  I know it will be a fascinating conversation.  I'll either be blogging about it later this week or . . .   I will listen to the sage if directive advice of my editor and say, well:   you'll just have to read the book!

In the meantime, though, explore her website.  It is full of interesting insights:  http://www.lindastone.net/

And here's the WIKIPEDIA entry on Linda Stone:

Linda Stone (born 1955) is a writer and consultant who coined the phrase "continuous partial attention" in 1998.   Stone also coined "email apnea" in 2008 which means "a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doing email."  

Stone was at Apple Computer from 1986 to 1993, working on multimedia hardware, software and publishing. In her last year at Apple, Stone worked for CEO John Sculley on special projects. In 1993, Stone joined Microsoft Research under Nathan Myhrvold and Rick Rashid. She co-founded and directed the Virtual Worlds Group/Social Computing Group, researching online social life and virtual communities. During this time, she also taught as adjunct faculty in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. In 2000, she became a Microsoft vice president, working on industry relationships and improving Microsoft's corporate culture. She left Microsoft in 2002.

Stone served a six year term on the National Board of the World Wildlife Fund and is currently on the WWF National Council. She is an adviser for the Internet and American Life Project, the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force for the Center for Worklife Policy, and is on the Advisory Board of the RIT Lab for social computing.

Stone has been written about in many major publications, including Wired, the New York Times, and Forbes

According to Tim O'Reilly, Science Foo Camp, a series of interdisciplinary scientific conferences organized by O'Reilly Media (FOO stands for "Friends of O'Reilly") and Nature Publishing Group was Linda Stone's idea.