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What’s Next for News?judgments and cognitive judgmentspeople always—probably 98 percent ofthe time—overestimate their abilities.It’s not cheating, it’s not bragging. It’san honest intuition that’s wrong.Ludtke: Does the brain reach a pointwhere it’s simply too stressed in waysthat make it more difficult to take inand process information?Just: In brain imaging we’re actuallymeasuring electrochemical activity.Like all biological functions it needs anenergy source. We measure the amountof brain activity while somebody’sdoing something. You can’t generatemore activity beyond a certain point.There’s an upper limit. You can sortof see it yourself when you’re tryingto do a digit-span task. Somebodyasks you to repeat back five digits. It’snot very hard. When they start goingto eight or 12 digits, there’s no moreroom for improvement and you justgive up at eight or 10, or whateveryour digit span is.Ludtke: In speaking with Sherry Turklewho teaches at Massachusetts Instituteof Technology and studies identity andself as it relates to digital media, wefound out that she’s not allowing theuse of computers in her class. Studentswere trying to do e-mail and Twitterand Facebook and also listen andparticipate in class while occasionallylooking down at their cell phonewhen it vibrated. She felt that all ofthis was leading to a diminution interms of what she was able to teachand what they were able to take in.[See interviews with Turkle beginningon page 20.]Just: Yes, I think the research supportswhat Turkle is saying. WhenI was a student, the problem waspeople reading the newspaper at theback of the room. Competition for astudent’s attention is an old problem,but now the media are so portable andinteresting and flexible that it’s evenmore tempting.Ludtke: We’ve been talking aboutmeasuring and locating brain activity,about upper limits of the brain’scapacity and distractions. All of thisrelates to the tasks confronting journalistsas they compete for attentionin a broader media universe.Just: That’s right. Now each of us islike an organization in that we haveto prioritize and decide what would bethe most beneficial way to spend ourthinking time in the next five or 30minutes. Because of the competitionand the availability of various sources,I know that I have to be much morethoughtful about what would be thebest use of my time, and such choicescome up many times an hour. So weneed to be more strategic, constantlydeciding whether to click on this nextthing or go back to what we werereading. It’s wonderful to have somuch information, but choosing andallocating our resources is a toughthing. The limiting resource now isn’tthe information; it’s our time.Ludtke: But it’s also our brain, isn’t it?Just: Oh, yes, that’s what I meant: ourbrain time.Ludtke: There is a notion that in thistime of information overload—ofeveryone trying to grab people’s attention—thatone thing that the brainis very pumped for is to take in emotionallycharged information. Do youhave any thoughts on this dynamic?Just: Yes. One of the biggest contributionsof brain imaging is to revealhow intensely social and emotionalthe human brain is. To me it was avery big surprise. Ask people to readsome innocuous little narrative andthe brain activity shows that they’recomputing things like the character’sintention and motivation. I think thereis a constant tendency to be processingsocial and emotional information. It’sthere and it’s ubiquitous.Ludtke: As journalism moved ontotelevision, news began to be conveyedin visual ways and this often led towhat is referred to as a “if it bleeds,it leads” style of reporting.Just: Processing print isn’t somethingthe human brain was built for. Theprinted word is a human artifact. It’svery convenient and it’s worked verywell for us for 5,000 years, but it’s aninvention of human beings. By contrastMother Nature has built into our brainour ability to see the visual world andinterpret it. Even the spoken languageis much more a given biologically thanreading written language.Ludtke: Does this mean that as wemove out of the era of print and paperand into the digital era with morevisual media, it’s going to be a morenatural environment for humans totake in information than when it wasthe printed word?Just: Yes, and it can be informative ina visual way. Now you can circumventwritten language to a large extent.A lot of printed words are there todescribe things that occur spatially.In many cases a picture is worth athousand words. Now we can generatethese pictures and graphics andwe can convey them to other peoplevery easily. I think it’s inevitable thatvisual media are going to become moreimportant in conveying ideas and notjust about raging fires.Ludtke: Ideas?Just: Ideas of physics and biology andpolitics and so on. Now I think there’sa role for the printed word. I don’tthink it’s going to go away.Ludtke: With children gaining a facilitywith digital media that many in theirparents’ generation don’t have, wouldyou expect that years from now brainimaging is going to show the brainfunctioning in different ways becauseof this orientation?Just: Yes, I think that’s very plausible.Nobody has done that yet. But let megive you an analogy done withoutimaging. In the 1970’s there was apsychologist who studied people whowere illiterate in Portugal. He founda group of people who had neverlearned how to use written language.14 Nieman Reports | Summer 2010