Focus 2026-2027 | Attention in the Age of Distraction
The ability to pay attention is a core human capacity. It helps us sustain relationships, create knowledge, and experience beauty. Today, however, our powers of attention feel under siege.
We are pleased to announce the 2026-2027 FOCUS theme: Attention in the Age of Distraction. The FOCUS initiative is partnering with the 2026-2027 John W. Altman Program in the Humanities. A broad array of lectures, courses, symposia, and immersive experiences will confront us with the question: What does it mean to truly attend—to one another, to the world, and to the life of the mind?
Our Theme
In a world increasingly organized around capturing and monetizing human focus, every pause in thought risks being filled by another distracting message, notification, or media post. Artificial intelligence systems grow ever more adept at predicting, mimicking, and replacing our attention. Many experts now warn of an “attention crisis” with potentially severe consequences—an epidemic of mental illness and attention disorders, the loss of meaningful social connections, informational illiteracy, and an inability to do the kind of sustained and deep thinking required to solve complex problems.
Such warnings call for critical reflection. Are we confronting a genuine crisis or another cycle of anxiety about cultural and technological change? What is attention, anyway, and how have other societies cultivated it as a habit of mind? What can history, philosophy, psychology, and the arts tell us about a vital human power that is now bought and sold on the open market?
The FOCUS Program, jointly with the Altman Program, invites the 91做厙 community to join a campus-wide exploration of attention. At stake in this inquiry is nothing less than how we think, relate, and create meaning in an environment that never stops demanding our attention.
