The Myth of Multitasking

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In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

Christine Rosen, “The Myth of Multitasking,” The New Atlantis, Spring 2008

I have to say that, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool computers and writing guy, I find this sort of discussion refreshing. In my own work, I find that a limited amount of multitasking is very helpful. Right now, for example, I am listening to WILL’s program Sidestep. (It’s pretty good, but amateurish in some ways).

I discovered as a teenager that this kind of white noise is helpful. On the other hand, after working online full time for a few years I have discovered that it’s best to turn off email while I am writing or commenting on papers. I sometimes put on a video instead of a podcast, but I usually listen more than watch.

There’s also been a few stories recently about “no email Fridays” and the like which seems to confirm that multitasking can be counter-productive. I am not sure that I would go as far as Chesterfield, but it may be true that what we thought was helpful is going to turn out to be much less so.

I sense an economic blind spot. I have been thinking about Twitter in these terms, too. A colleague, for example, shared this post (via listserv) on “25 Twitter Tips for College Students.” What I find so interesting is that each item on the list is either unnecessary or better done in other ways.

Why have so many online “presences” at all? I think Twitter– and the Iphone– illustrate the absurdities that arise when consumerism meets technological fetishism. I’m hoping for a backlash that focuses on using these tools well.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Language, Online Places, Professional, Writing

Parity for Mass Transit

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The buzz on gas prices has people rethinking the way they travel. USA Today recently reported record breaking public transit ridership based on a study by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). For the months of January through March 2008 ridership increased 10% when compared to the same months in 2007. And while many riders are making the switch due to rising fuel prices, many of them stick to public transit for its “service and convenience,” according to Linda Robson of Seattle’s Sound Transit. For riders fortunate enough to live and work near major bus and rail lines, the shift makes a lot of sense.

But how many people really have this good fortune? According to the 2006 US census, only about 1 in 5 households. The logical solution: Make bus and rail lines more extensive. The bleak reality: No one wants to pay for it.

Enviroblog, “Public funds for public transport,” Jorg Etilico, July 3, 2008

Here’s a remarkable fact, from the The Northeast-Midwest Institute: “Highways get approximately $30 billion from the federal government in the Highway Trust Fund alone, while railway funding at best is $1 billion from all sources, for all purposes.”

Now try to image if we could insist on parity– if we spend $30 billion on highways and bridges, then we must also spend $30 billion on mass transit, including Amtrak. We need the jobs, we need the bridges fixed, and we need to change how we use energy. It seems like a no-brainer.

Actually, more personally, I am sick of dealing with airports whenever I want to travel to Louisiana and Texas to see my family. I would be happy to spend a day and a half on a train each way, twice a year, especially if there was a sleeper car and wireless access.

[This note comes from Amanda, at Enviroblog: “One thing — the post’s photo was by Jorg Elitico. The post itself was by our intern Sameem. Sorry for the confusion!”

Thanks! — Ray]

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Writing

Class Writing

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Les Perelman, director of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks the writing test is so bad that he coaches students on how to write abysmal essays, while including words that the College Board likes (“plethora” is key) and to end up with great scores. (The story of one of his successful efforts is here.)

Perelman said that it’s absolutely no surprise that students who do well on the SAT writing test do well in college. The College Board favors the traditional “five paragraph essay” format taught to high school freshmen, and those who are going to succeed in college have generally mastered the format and picked up the various tricks that earn good scores on the essay. (One of Perelman’s students, to show how the scoring favors quotations from famous people, accurate or not, took the test using various quotes that happened to be visible in the testing room, and attributed all of them to Lee Iacocca — and she earned great scores.)

“The writing test is teaching students a lot of bad habits,” said Perelman. “It’s real predictive value, in terms of writing, is nil.”

Scott Jaschik, The New SAT: Longer, but No Better?

It’s hard to believe that the standardized test still exists, especially for college entrance exams. They are rooted in eugenicists’ attempts to prove racial superiority and have long been implicated in a kind of racial and class profiling. Even the testers themselves have given up the game, admitting that high school grades are better at predicting college grades.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Economics, Language

The Rise of the Machines

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Just as, today, we have no living memories of a time before the existence of radio, we will soon live in a world in which no one living experienced growing up in a society without computers. It is for this reason that we must try to examine what we stand to lose and gain, before it is too late. Susan Greenfield and others are right that there is no necessary correlation between technological and moral progress, and that unintended consequences have proliferated from all those leaps humanity has made over the last hundred and even thousands of years. In the past, such losses have barely registered in our daily lives, because those who could tell us about them were long dead. But today, with epochal change taking place on the scale of generations, our past and our future are almost simultaneous—and the joyful, absorbing complexity that games can deliver is also their greatest threat.

Within the virtual worlds we have begun to construct, players can experience the kind of deep, lasting satisfactions that only come from the performance of a complex, sociable and challenging task. Yet such satisfactions will always remain, in a crucial sense, unreal. Whatever skills it teaches and friendships it creates, an eight-hour World of Warcraft session is nevertheless solipsistic like few other activities. Is a descent into precision-engineered narcissism on the cards? I believe not: the ways we are already making and playing games show that to be human is to demand more than this. But the doomsayers are right in one important respect. If we do not learn to balance the new worlds we are building with our living culture, we may lose something of ourselves.

Tom Chatfield, The New Prospect, June 2008

It’s Friday and I think this is the latest I’ve posted since I started this blog almost two years ago so I won’t add much to this quote. Chatfield’s piece is thoughtful and worth reading, even in the end his main point is that people are people and technology won’t change that anytime soon.

Each new media or genre at least since the novel has been met with the same dire warnings about certain doom. Each has been wrong, too, unless you want to blame media for the non-stop violence of the last hundred years or so. Maybe we can link Grand Theft Auto to global warming.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Miscellaneous, Writing