Editing 1411: Loop

{{comic
| number    = 1411
| date      = August 22, 2014
| title     = Loop
| image     = loop.png
| titletext = Ugh, today's kids are forgetting the old-fashioned art of absentmindedly reading the same half-page of a book over and over and then letting your attention wander and picking up another book.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is seen at his desk in front of four devices. He has clearly run out of things to do, or is looking for an excuse to procrastinate. A flowchart describes the process by which he scans the whole environment for something to do, which everyone can relate to.

The comic uses electronics likely because they are the common time killer these days, and are most likely to contain fresh, tantalizing entertainment. News sites can be viewed as a good source of yet-to-be-seen content. Yet the search yields no interesting content, or the results don't garner enough attention, thus the blank stares and moving on to next device in line. Cueball has four devices, so he can begin with the PC and move through the loop three times - first to laptop, then tablet and finally to smartphone.

The title text notes that this also happened before there were electronic devices like today, assuming most entertainment came from books. The point made is that, while the Internet and modern electronic devices are often blamed for jeopardizing the minds of adolescents, the attention span of "the kids" is not worse than it ever was, neither in the context of low-tech nor high-tech media. Kids focus on some things for a long time, but they do change this focus often very abruptly. But nevertheless there are still many kids reading books today until the end.

The title text could also be considered to imply another type of loop in which various generations experience the same situations under different circumstances (i.e., history repeating itself). In this case, the new generation experiences the attention lapse loop with electronics, whereas the previous generation experienced this same loop with books. There may also be a commentary present on the shorter attention span of the current generation as opposed to the previous one in that there is an obvious terminus to the electronics loop while the book loop could extend nearly indefinitely.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits at a desk, accompanied by a desktop computer and a laptop open in front of it. He is holding a tablet in his left hand and a smartphone in his right.]

:[A cyclical flowchart is shown above Cueball:]
:Stare blankly at screen -> Open news site -> Start reading -> Get bored -> Absentmindedly check smaller device -> Stare blankly at screen -> ...

==Trivia==
*His compulsive checking of various sites is also presented in [[862: Let Go]], where in the title text he mentions that the solution he found was to add a 30 second delay for any sites that he opened before he could use them. This is further expanded in the [http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-extensio/ xkcd blog].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Kids]]