'On Looking': The world you're not seeing

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/12/health/human-factor-arlene-gordon/index.html?hpt=hp_bn13

by Alexandra Horowitz, cnn.com
March 12th 2013

What do you see when you walk to work, take yourself or your child to school, run to the store or head around the block with your dog?

Chances are, not much at all.

Evolution in humans has refined our ability to selectively attend to one stimulus and ignore all others; in this case, most of the myriad of stimuli that bombards you on the street, from people and pigeons to sounds and smells.

This capacity is useful, and lets us "concentrate" when we need to. But it also means that we spend a lot of time ignoring the richness of the world around us.

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