To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe itâs because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe thatâs where phrases like âdeadly dullâ or âexcruciatingly dullâ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something thatâs dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thingâs pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractlyâŠbut surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarketsâ checkouts, airport gates, SUVsâ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I canât think anyone really believes that todayâs so-called âinformation societyâ is just about information. Everyone knows itâs about something else, way down.