I'm grateful to Future Now and Steve King, posting there, for the link to an article in The Seattle Times on information overload:
Multitasking and angst about its necessity have been studied for several decades, and Roman philosopher Publilius Syrus himself uttered in 100 BC, "To do two things at once is to do neither." Yet, multitasking is constant now. We do it because it is expected, but also because we believe we can — sort of. The truth, says, David Meyer, a Michigan psychologist and cognitive scientist who has run several studies on the subject, is we don't and can't do it well. We can if the tasks are simple and virtually automatic (think walking and chewing gum at the same time) but true, effective, efficient, meaningful multitasking is akin to jamming two TV signals down the same cable wire. You get static, not high-definition.
(This flashback to the Romans reminded me of another voice from the Roman past which seems entirely timeless and which I've kept above my desk throughout the last decade:
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
That's Caius Petronius, writing in 66 AD.)
The Seattle Times article focuses on David Levy, a professor in Washington's School of Information:
You can work at home or the coffee shop or even the beach. Is this a good thing? How do we navigate these rapids without eventually drowning? Are we allowing life to be the sum of tasks, the short term always the priority? Are we so connected that we're actually disconnected? And has anyone had enough time to focus long enough to mull a question that requires a long, complicated answer — if there is one?
Levy, whose PhD work at Stanford was in computer science and artificial intelligence, has made it his mission to ask these questions. He's already hosted a conference — titled "Information, Silence and Sanctuary" — that pulled together an unlikely roster that included not only technologists and sociologists but a storyteller and a cardiologist, a poet, an economist, a monk and a CEO.
That sounds interesting!
Back in the '70s, … (Levy) worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, a think tank at the forefront of today's computing world. … John Seely Brown, who was director of the Palo Alto center when Levy worked there, says so much attention has been put into computing firepower that little has been done to factor in human bearings and texture.
"The pace and density of modern sub/urban life work against mindful presence," he (Levy) wrote. "Indeed, at times modern life almost seems engineered to obstruct it. The word that often comes to mind is 'fragmented.' … We're just beginning to notice that something is out of balance. Perhaps we could be at the beginning of research, social activism, consciousness-raising and education that would help us not just identify the problem but find solutions."
And here's Anthony Townsend, writing last month about locative media and the urban environment:
… there are two equally possible scenarios – that locative media are the trigger for an unsustainable explosion in personal mobility in the world’s great cities, or that they are the key to unlock knowledge that will help us achieve a sustainable global urban system. Few questioned the long-term effects of the automobile when it appeared in the 1920s, and it was not until GM’s Futurama exhibit of the 1939 World’s Fair that we saw a coherent vision of what the car could do to our cities. Unfortunately, the corporate goals of GM have led to an American urban landscape that isolates, fattens and stupefies its residents. The discussion about locative media and the future of urban life needs to start today.
Perhaps Powaqqatsi? Not a film, says Reggio, 'about what should or shouldn't be. "It's an impression, an examination of how life is changing", he explains. "That's all it is. There is good and there is bad. What we sought to capture is our unanimity as a global culture. Most of us tend to forget about this, caught up as we are in our separate trajectories." '
Ah, separateness vs global culture (of a desirable kind, if we can imagine that) …
