Dividing up your attention
(verbose version)

[Intro] [DataTable] [Chart] [What'sNext] [ReadMore] [Credits]

Introduction

As part of a larger program here at UM-StL of developing awareness on multiple scales of time and space, this applet allows you to experiment with vizualizing ways that you connect to the layered niche-networks around you. You might begin by correcting the values in the table below, which is initially set to divide 100 waking hours (e.g. the past week) of attention pretty much equally across all 18 categories. Then click the "UpDate Values" button above the piechart below. In addition to generating an interesting pie chart (whose changes might be fun to monitor over the years), this page also calculates your niche multiplicity, a quantity that we expect may prove useful to demographic studies downstream. Although we expect yours to be relatively insensitive to the precise values that you input, significant impacts to the value for a community might be expected in times of crisis (e.g. during power outages) and as the economy (independent of GNP) affects quality of life.

Note: The breakdown within each table is somewhat arbitrary at this point, and is unlikely to match with the slice-arrangement that you have in mind. Hence please let us know where shortcomings of the implementation show through, particularly in our attempt at making something that is useful across demographic settings and cultures. In the meantime, in days ahead look for a drop-down list of slice choices within each of the 6 layers to make the task simpler.

Data Table

First two layers: Begin with correlations setup in context of that boundary in common to most multi-celled lifeforms on earth: The metazoan skin.

Self: Focus inward from one's metazoan skin
Number (or fraction) of waking hours
Nutrition: attention directed toward taking care of yourself on the molecular level.
 
Fitness/Shelter: effort directed toward taking care of your physical condition.
 
Learning: attention directed toward maintaining and improving your awareness of the world around.
 
One-on-one: Focus outward from one's metazoan skin
Number (or fraction) of waking hours
Friend: attention directed toward doing stuff with friends.
 
Partner: effort directed toward engaging with a partner (e.g. of the business or reproductive sort).
 
Mentor: attention directed toward mentoring other lifeforms.
 

Now turn to correlations setup in context of a boundary recognized (behaviorally at least) by many animals on earth, namely the gene-pool boundary and other molecule code-pool gradients.

Family: Focus inward from your molecular-codepool boundary
Number (or fraction) of waking hours
Ancestors: attention directed toward quality-time with parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc.
 
Offspring: effort directed toward engaging, serving, or just doing stuff with your kids, grandkids, etc.
 
In-Laws: attention directed toward engaging and/or serving your reproductive partner's ancestors, siblings, etc.
 
Hierarchy/Consensus: Focus outward from your molecular-codepool boundary
Number (or fraction) of waking hours
Community: attention directed toward community activities not otherwise included in these tables.
 
Employer: effort directed toward being an employer, or toward engaging/serving your employer as an end in itself, rather than e.g. working a job for the sake of other objectives listed here.
 
Government: attention directed toward engaging and/or serving local, regional, national or international governing bodies as an end in itself.
 

Finally, consider correlations set up with respect to that most recently-emergent (and complex) of physical boundaries, i.e. the boundary between pools of idea codes.

Culture/Believing: Focus inward from your memetic-codepool boundary
Number (or fraction) of waking hours
Tradition: effort directed toward serving and/or evolving traditions at home and abroad.
 
Arts/Sport: attention directed toward serving as a non-passive spectator or performer in cultural (e.g. crafts and performing arts) and/or sport activities.
 
Religion: attention directed toward participating in belief-focussed activities, including but not limited to organized religion.
 
Knowledge/Observing: Focus outward from your memetic-codepool boundary
Number (or fraction) of waking hours
Profession: attention directed toward serving a multi-cultural community of organisms in some professional capacity.
 
Archives: effort directed toward exploring, and contributing to, your species' archival knowledge base.
 
Field/Study: attention directed toward faithful observation of the world around.
 

Attention-Slice PieChart

; Sum of hours/fractions: ; Niche-Level Multiplicity: .

What's Next?


Read more about it


This page is http://newton.umsl.edu/~run/nano/piechart0.html. Acknowledgement is due particularly to Martin Kraus for his robust Live3D applet. Although there are many contributors, the person responsible for errors is P. Fraundorf. This site is hosted by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UM-StL. MindQuilts site page requests ~2000/day approaching a million per year. Requests for a "stat-counter linked subset of pages" since 4/7/2005: .