The Epidemic of Digital Distraction 159
asto21 writes "Almost no one does just one thing anymore. The screens won't let us. And in an incredible burst of human evolution, our minds have grown accustomed to monitoring multiple inputs at once. Yeah, you're reading this post. But we're nearly three paragraphs in. So if you're anything like me, it's about that time to check Twitter, count the additions to your Google Plus circles, read a handful of new incoming email messages, and chime in on a couple of ongoing instant message conversations. But are we paying less attention to important details?"
Original concept (Score:4, Informative)
Quick, someone make a reply claiming they don't suffer from this type of thing, but then pretending to get distracted by something else part way through typing it! It will be hilarious, and not at all obvious!
(I wonder how long until someone replies point out that my post is also a rather unoriginal thing to say...)
Yes, we are paying less attention (Score:5, Informative)
We used to call this condition, having our attention hopping from one thing to another to another in quick succession, "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off". You deal with a lot of things, but you don't have time to really pay attention to any one of them because your attention needs to hop to the next. You waste time shifting mental gears, and more time picking up your train of thought for this item. In computer science we call it "thrashing", and it's something to be avoided because the overhead of context-switching eats up cycles that could be used for actual work. In extreme cases it gets so bad the system's doing nothing but thrash, no actual work gets done because all the cycles are eaten up by swapping and context switching. Humans are vulnerable to the same thing.
That's why geeks value being "in the zone" so much. It's nothing mysterious, it's just the condition of being able to focus on one specific thing without interruption, and it makes you so much more productive (hence why geeks seek it out).
Human multitasking is a myth (Score:5, Informative)
"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794 [npr.org]
Re:Human multitasking is a myth (Score:2, Informative)
... actually - we are extremely good at multitasking! In fact, my heart is beating at the same time I'm breathing, thankfully. Not to mention all of the disease my body is fighting right now. Don't even get me started about my hormonal systems.
Although we may not be great at being conscious of many things at once.
An analogy would be a micro-controller/FPGA with many peripherals, but one CPU core.