Being of two minds about multi-tasking...

"(T)he printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption — and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection."
From blurb about the book "The Shallows -- What the Internet is Doing to Our Minds" by Nicholas Carr 

In my past, maybe in your past, OK, in the past, what might be called "single-tasking" was, if not the rule, at least not exceptional at all.

There weren't as many opportunities to multi-task, and we certainly didn't have the means to multi-task that today's technology offers.
 
It was more common to listen to music without doing much of anything else besides listening to the music. Sometimes, in order to intensify the listening, we'd listen in the dark and the music would seem to take over all thinking.

We would read a book, sometimes cover to cover, sitting all Saturday in a chair, in pajamas, unwashed, unfed, unable to leave the book except perhaps for the bathroom.

Sitting on a front porch in the evening. Lying on your back, looking at the stars. Prayer or meditation.

Even a marvelous meal with a friend or loved one might take place mostly in silence, in deference to culinary pleasure.

Is "single-tasking" beginning to seem very romantic and nostalgic? Yep, back in the day, we didn't have any fancy filters between our human senses and the world around us. And it was uphill both ways. We may have been less sophisticated, but more grown-up, perhaps, and a little happier. I can't remember.

Multi-tasking at work
Maybe I shouldn't call the above examples tasks, but pleasures. But sitting with half-closed eyes mentally examining an engineering problem, for example, can be called a task -- or work -- and still be a wonderful pleasure. But visualizing doesn't look like visible work -- so we feel compelled to do "pretend" work on top of our real work. Look, the cursor on my screen is moving! I am emailing! I am working! Leave me alone so I can get some thinking done!

Regarding the productivity we supposedly gain thru multi-tasking, I would say: garbage in, garbage out. Because you've deprived each task of a certain amount of hard, focused thinking, your productivity born of multi-tasking will likely produce poor quality. Studies are showing that human brains can only direct two tasks effectively at the same time. Any more and our performance degrades. You can train like crazy and do better -- combat chopper pilots can multi-task better than average. But we don't get that training unless we commit to real danger. We civvies just poke at our devices, try to time-manage, starve each task of attention, and reach a point of saturation pretty quickly.

The more things change, the more we change the same.
When I was a kid, I'd hear all the griping about how modernity in general was making us stupid. We're "amusing ourselves to death." Rock and roll is making us stupid. Television is making us stupid. I'm sure my grandparents were told that jazz was making them stupid.

And the truth is: in many ways, the simplification and de-sophistication of art and literature has helped us become less attentive, less skilled at things like critical thinking, less apt to engage in high-level activities like reading, and less civil in general. What we are getting ever better at is fast, shallow thinking applied to a broad range of not-very-important tasks.

Our smart devices and "cloud mind" insulate us from painful reality and from beautiful reality, too. We distance ourselves from from each other as individuals while technology-enhanced multi-tasking helps us collectively amuse and work ourselves to death, "Idiocracy" style.

Throughout human history (cue music) we've had big societal changes overtake the previous generation, who grouse and grumble while the succeeding generation simply absorbs the new and marches on. Big deal!

What's different now is technological change happens so damn fast that a myriad of changes occur concurrently to my generation and yours and theirs...and not everyone in the world is privy to the same changes at the same rate.

Our natural selfishness embraces device-driven divisiveness. Global corporations and global finance suck wealth upwards, and pretty soon technological divisions become an issue of class and financial status -- an early symptom of this would be the proposed end to "net neutrality."

CHOOSE ONE OF TWO ENDINGS TO THIS POST:

ENDING ONE:
Holy frakking shite. We need to turn this junk OFF. We need to secede from the information superpoopchute. I'm sitting here writing a blog in order to promote my "personal brand" because I think I have to, business-wise, all the while slowly convincing myself that I need to unplug my life. Why not just log waay out and join an itinerant band of non-digital musicians, artisans and freaks in order to create some motion away from this cyber-sodomy? In doing so I'd make the rest of my life difficult in every way. But there's no guarantee that I don't face an uncomfortable life anyway...or that I'll live through tonight. Oh well. No matter what I do, I'll make the work come first. Why panic? Just work.

ENDING TWO:
At least for now, I'm going to participate in these techno-societal changes. I've been a part of them all my life. They may help my work be seen and heard by more people. But as a middle-aged creative, I have to think that at some point the only thing left to me will be, if my health allows, the act and journey of creating, and not much more. The artist Ben Shahn once said: "(D)uring all those years of obscurity I protected myself with the philosophy that a headful of thoughts and a handful of paintings were the important things in life even if the public never found out about either." I believe it. Why panic? Just work.