Multitasking is Dumbing us Down and Driving us Crazy | Hacker News Reader

Multitasking is Dumbing us Down and Driving us Crazy

theatlantic.com

38 pointsbfioca19 comments

Something about this article feels wrong. Maybe it's the author's disdain for technology, or the apparent hatred towards multi-tasking (the author brings up the story of how he/she crashed while checking pictures on their camera while it was raining - this is their fault, not the phones'). The whole article seems like a, 'Remember the good ol' days when things were more simple?' story, telling of how all our technology has made things worse and by golly we should be concentrating on one thing only. Yet everyone multi-tasks, we were designed to do it; our ancestors had to concentrate on hunting in groups, and in doing so concentrate on their prey and communication among the group.

Sure, too much multi-tasking is probably a bad thing, as can be said about anything, but it's so useful to multi-task. Everyone here is probably multi-tasking five different browser windows with ten different tabs in each while messaging and ssh'd into a server. It is just so efficient to concentrate on the most we can handle at once.

This line cements this article for me as an ill-formed hate piece against technology: "What has the madness of multitasking cost us? The better question might be: What hasn't it?"

This line of reasoning is what I hear from religious fundamentalists about science.

And is the author actually trying to blame multi-tasking for Enron and Iraq?!?! Seriously, references are made towards how people were fooled by enron's constant multi-tasking of corporate tax law, saying that people were just too blazed by the sheer number of tasks in their everyday life to catch them, and then references a quote later from Guiliani on the concentration of US military power towards iraq, iran, afghanistan, implying in a low handed way that were being suckered by the administration. This article is garbage. This article isn't even about multi-tasking.

(also,) does (the author (really) like lisp (or something)(?))

I gave up after the first page. Not because I was doing too many other things but the article just seemed crap with no actual science content. With so many other options life is too short short to read some no-content, neo-Luddite, arts student rant. Maybe that is why these type of people don't like the options provided by technology - it means that we don't have to read their pretentious fluff.

There is science behind this -- and the article mentions it later -- but Walter Kirn is a fiction writer and essayist rather than science/feature reporter. So this is a narrative and meditation on the topic, rather than survey or policy paper.

I thought the characterization of extreme multitasking and availability as a sort of 'attention bubble' likely to pop was interesting.

Then again, I enjoyed Kirn's novel 'Up in the Air', as well as the movie adaptation of his novel 'Thumbsucker'. And another of his articles at Atlantic, 'Lost in the Meritocracy', is a vivid and cynical look at his Princeton years that could interest News.YCers... if they have the attention span. :)

OK fair enough. Maybe there was reasonable content later in the article. The fact is that a lot of us can't afford to invest the time it takes to get through this guy's life story in the hope of finding it. Ironically the very people that the science content could have been more useful to are the ones who don't have the time to read it.

Down with the arts students!

Right on!

Things that require concentration shouldn't be interrupted. If only people who schedule meetings at typical corporate offices could understand that.

I'm convinced the cliche late night hacker has nothing to do with the time of day. They'll eat the productivity hit because they're tired in order to boost their work because they are alone and not distracted.

I agree. I figured out the reason I stayed up late in high school was because that was the only time nothing interrupted me.

Agreed - I went through the same thing in HS and my parents used to bug me about it at first; Since I got good grades though, they did not give me too much grief about it ;)

Tangential, but my schedule lately has been pretty wacky according to some, but I usually start most of my intensive tasks around 11pm and work till about 6-7am and then go to sleep till 1pm with another nap in the late afternoon; This allows me to multi-task during the day!

If we continue the multi-task metaphor, i think it's the context-switching that hurts the effectiveness of multi-tasking in work. If the interruption is over instant messenger, it's not as bad. Sometimes I have to put on headphones with loud music to cut out the white-noise office chatter.

1. Coding for project 2. Interruption from business analyst on project/another project 3. Write this-is-where-I-am-with-the-code to "mental" disk 4. Answer business analyst 5. Resume coding 6. "Mental" disk: File Not Found (see 3)

I didn't really understand the article because I read it while doing 8 other things, but I agree.

Seriously, talking in IRC and reading an article is hard.

Continuous Partial Attention ?

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/06/supernova_2005_2.h...

Anyone remember 'Knuth vs Email'? (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html)

However, I would really like to get a phone with a decent camera and GPS support (should tag the photographs), but so far haven't found one. Any recommendations?

I was startled but not surprised to find the inevitable links to two additional pages after my initial interest had abated.

whats you mean multitaskcking slowing dumping us down? Im do fine and does ten things at same time too!!!

That article needs to get to the point.

Sadly, I read the entire thing. I know, I know. But it's 5am and I have programmers block.

Now, I may speak for myself on this, but I think the problem is not so much multi-tasking.. as it is being forced to switch ALL your focus from task to task.

I mean, for instance, I have found I work best when I am listening to music, chatting about something and coding as well. With things prioritized in my head.

Like he quoted in the article, "We can walk and chew gum". Yes, we can. But we don't walk, stop to chew some gum, stop chewing and start walking again.. ad infinitum.

Different parts of our mind are activated by different activities and stimuli, so I'd say our mind can do certain things concurrently. I know doing something kinetic (fidgety) can help my concentration.

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