We're familiar with multi-tasking?
It seems that the habit of multitasking has become more prevalent in our modern society. We've been steadily adding to the number of information streams available to us for some time. This is coupled with the fact that we have only recently been taught to be bored. If you're not currently engaged in these multiple information streams then you have been instructed that you are in fact bored. People in olden days, were apparently bored all the time, but were used to it and did not notice.
You've been tempted to immerse yourself in media, read watch and listen to the news with three different scrolling banners.
So multitasking is often thought of as a useful skill? This is called a conception. Science loves to take conceptions, investigate them and determine that they are in fact mis-conceptions. What has science to say on the value of multitasking?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/multitasking/
It turns out that it takes less time to do a series of tasks one at time than it does to do all of them at once.
It turns out that we are more successful at each task if we do them one at time instead of all at once.
This makes general sense. But there is an unforeseen consequence of multitasking that science reveals to us . It seems that after multi-tasking for a significant amount of time, we actually do worse when we try to focus. Multi-tasking hurts our ability to focus!
This seems to confirm suspicions that the multi-tasking lifestyle is dangerous and the ill-effects can be felt in the scatterbrained neuroses of our time.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking
It turns out that when we multi-task we aren't doing multiple things at once we are only switching back and forth between tasks rapidly.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794
Departing Questions:
Think of the computer-mind analogy. At which level is the computer multitasking?
Is multi-tasking a behavior of a level underneath the level of consciousness?
Is that a problem?
