My wife, Beth knowing and understanding my dissatisfaction with the multitasking generation (and my current assignment), gave me the “New York” magazine (http://nymag.com/) article “In Defense of Distraction”, by Sam Anderson. The article is not one sided and allows pundits views such as Socrates (“memory-destroying properties of that newfangled technology called “writing”) and the late Herbert A. Simon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon) a polymath Nobel prize winner in economics professor of Carnegie Mellon University, “What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid occdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh
Are you distracted or focused? How can I (we) say without many years of study that multitasking is a good thing or bad, that concentration focused or not is effective, without study. What was the cause that the PBS Frontline “Digital Nation” documentary filmed that the MIT students mean score on an exam were 75, when the professor asserts that it was an easy 100 grade? Could it have been a factor of bad teaching, bad hair day, flu epidemic, or the Patriots were in the Super Bowl? What do you think, I am just throwing these out there; I know where my feelings lie.
Mr. Anderson’s writes, “When forced to multitask, the overloaded brain shifts its processing from the hippocampus (responsible for memory) to the striatum (responsible for rote tasks), making it hard to learn a task or even recall what you’ve been doing once you’re done”. (p 31), “The brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplastic.P(p 101) He gives the example that London taxi drivers, have enlarged hippocampi (memory and spatial reasoning) a neural reward for paying attention to driving in that city. He also writes, that the brains of Buddhist monks asked to meditate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion” show instant and remarkable changes: Their left prefrontal cortices (responsible for positive emotions) go into overdrive they produce gamma waves 30 times more powerful that novice mediators, and their wave activity is coordinated in a way often seen in patients under anesthesia.
How would we do, or our parents, our siblings, or most importantly our students, all of them not just the ones who will become MIT students, Monks, or taxi drivers?
There is the strong argument that multitasking is not possible with regard to the “channels” of the brain, language, visual, auditory, etc. For example I can listen to the Yankees on the radio and tie flies, as these are two different functions, but I cannot watch the Yankees on TV and tie flies. I’ll never forget the advice as I was picking myself up off of “Liftline” on Stowe Mountain, that one expert skier told me many years ago, “Only one bump at a time”. Was I thinking, ‘The Matterhorn’ (local hangout), hot shower, aspirin, (or most likely) “What the hell am I doing” when what I should have been thinking and concentrating on was both mind and body to “focus on the fall line”(no pun intended). Is it possible for individuals to be advanced enough to do these multi brain exercised? Anderson leaves us with these words, “”Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t…maybe in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction”.(p 101)
The article mentions ADHD, (which is what I thought of immediately because of the similarities to multitasking), and how in a changing environment that it could be a benefit. It also talks about drug testing at chess tournaments for neuroenchancers, (“spring from a source as the problem they’re designed to correct: our lust for achievement in defiance of natural constraints”)(p100). I again equate it to baseball, is it cheating, when a baseball player uses HGH or steroids? Have not baseball players always cheated? Spit balls, corked bats, pine tar, amphetamines, coffee, stealing bases, knowing they are out or did not catch the ball and not telling the truth? Apparently there are levels of accepted cheating, when will multitasking be accepted or banned?
Finally to quote Anderson’s article once more, “The true mind will harness rather than abandon, the power of distraction.”(p 101)
In final conclusion, in writing this paper I used the internet, let the dogs out, broomed snow to get fire wood, loaded the wood stove, drank water, and my mind wandered the most when I wrote about skiing. I consider my blogging paper done, with limited distractions and
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid occdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh
Are you distracted or focused? How can I (we) say without many years of study that multitasking is a good thing or bad, that concentration focused or not is effective, without study. What was the cause that the PBS Frontline “Digital Nation” documentary filmed that the MIT students mean score on an exam were 75, when the professor asserts that it was an easy 100 grade? Could it have been a factor of bad teaching, bad hair day, flu epidemic, or the Patriots were in the Super Bowl? What do you think, I am just throwing these out there; I know where my feelings lie.
Mr. Anderson’s writes, “When forced to multitask, the overloaded brain shifts its processing from the hippocampus (responsible for memory) to the striatum (responsible for rote tasks), making it hard to learn a task or even recall what you’ve been doing once you’re done”. (p 31), “The brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplastic.P(p 101) He gives the example that London taxi drivers, have enlarged hippocampi (memory and spatial reasoning) a neural reward for paying attention to driving in that city. He also writes, that the brains of Buddhist monks asked to meditate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion” show instant and remarkable changes: Their left prefrontal cortices (responsible for positive emotions) go into overdrive they produce gamma waves 30 times more powerful that novice mediators, and their wave activity is coordinated in a way often seen in patients under anesthesia.
How would we do, or our parents, our siblings, or most importantly our students, all of them not just the ones who will become MIT students, Monks, or taxi drivers?
There is the strong argument that multitasking is not possible with regard to the “channels” of the brain, language, visual, auditory, etc. For example I can listen to the Yankees on the radio and tie flies, as these are two different functions, but I cannot watch the Yankees on TV and tie flies. I’ll never forget the advice as I was picking myself up off of “Liftline” on Stowe Mountain, that one expert skier told me many years ago, “Only one bump at a time”. Was I thinking, ‘The Matterhorn’ (local hangout), hot shower, aspirin, (or most likely) “What the hell am I doing” when what I should have been thinking and concentrating on was both mind and body to “focus on the fall line”(no pun intended). Is it possible for individuals to be advanced enough to do these multi brain exercised? Anderson leaves us with these words, “”Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t…maybe in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction”.(p 101)
The article mentions ADHD, (which is what I thought of immediately because of the similarities to multitasking), and how in a changing environment that it could be a benefit. It also talks about drug testing at chess tournaments for neuroenchancers, (“spring from a source as the problem they’re designed to correct: our lust for achievement in defiance of natural constraints”)(p100). I again equate it to baseball, is it cheating, when a baseball player uses HGH or steroids? Have not baseball players always cheated? Spit balls, corked bats, pine tar, amphetamines, coffee, stealing bases, knowing they are out or did not catch the ball and not telling the truth? Apparently there are levels of accepted cheating, when will multitasking be accepted or banned?
Finally to quote Anderson’s article once more, “The true mind will harness rather than abandon, the power of distraction.”(p 101)
In final conclusion, in writing this paper I used the internet, let the dogs out, broomed snow to get fire wood, loaded the wood stove, drank water, and my mind wandered the most when I wrote about skiing. I consider my blogging paper done, with limited distractions and
Nice picture of your dog!
ReplyDeleteThere is much to think about the problems associated with multitasking.The article you mentioned in conjunction with "Digital Nation" raises more examples concerning distraction and is an excellent choice to pair with "Digital Nation."
ReplyDeleteIt was difficult at time to separate out your words and the quoted text even though you did cite page numbers and use quotation marks. Rethink your paragraphing and quotes to help the reader better understand where your remarks begin and end.